Cape Town or Victoria Falls?

Cape Town has real beaches, though the two coasts are very different. Clifton and Camps Bay are beautiful places to lie on the sand, but the Atlantic is too cold for more than a quick dip. False Bay, with Muizenberg, St James and the tidal pools, is where you go to swim in summer.

Victoria Falls is landlocked, and the Zambezi is full of crocodiles and strong currents, so swimming means a lodge pool. The only exception is Devil's Pool at low water, a supervised moment on the edge of the falls rather than a beach day.

Cape Town is one of the better places in the southern hemisphere to eat. It has its own creole cooking in Cape Malay curries and bobotie, line fish at Kalk Bay and Hout Bay, ambitious chefs around Bree Street and Woodstock, and Winelands estates within easy reach.

At Victoria Falls you mostly eat in your lodge. Game meat grilled over open fires at big drumming dinners, sadza with stews and tea on the Victoria Falls Hotel terrace are all worth trying once, but there are no markets and no cafés, and a few nights covers what there is.

Cape Town gives you several days of meaningful history: the ferry to Robben Island, the District Six Museum, the Castle of Good Hope, the museums around the Company's Garden, the Bo-Kaap's mosques and Zeitz MOCAA in its grain silo. The history is the hard history of apartheid rather than grand architecture.

Victoria Falls has very little. The 1905 bridge from the Cape to Cairo railway, the Edwardian hotel and statues of Livingstone are worth an hour or two. For a proper museum you cross into Zambia to visit Livingstone.

Cape Town's evenings often start with a sundowner on the Camps Bay beachfront or a rooftop as the sun sets over the Atlantic. From there you can move on to the cocktail and wine bars of Bree and Kloof Streets, the late clubs of Long Street or the long-established gay quarter of De Waterkant. The bars and clubs are spread across the city, so people get between them by ride-hailing, and nights out are liveliest from December to March.

At Victoria Falls, the drink on a river cruise or lodge deck is most of the night. Afterwards there are hotel bars, a couple of pubs and a backpacker bar that fills up with rafting crews, but no clubs. Elephants walk through town after dark, so people take taxis rather than walk, and most are asleep early before a dawn game drive.

Both are outstanding, in very different ways. Cape Town's wild landscape is right beside the city. You can climb Table Mountain and Lion's Head, walk among the fynbos of a whole floral kingdom down to Cape Point, see penguins at Boulders and whales in False Bay, and surf at Muizenberg.

At Victoria Falls one great natural sight and a big-game landscape surround the town. You can walk through the spray of Mosi-oa-Tunya, raft and bungee in the gorges below, and find elephant, buffalo and lion in Zambezi National Park, with Chobe's herds close enough for a day out.

From Cape Town you can head out for several days without repeating yourself. Stellenbosch, Franschhoek, Paarl and Constantia offer old Cape Dutch towns and wine tastings, and Hermanus, Tulbagh and the West Coast villages add more. You will need a car or a tour for nearly all of them.

Victoria Falls has less to offer beyond its wildlife. Livingstone, just over the bridge, has its museum and colonial main street, and Kasane is mostly a way into Chobe. Beyond those, the distances in this part of Africa are too long for a day out.

Cape Town works for children of any age. The Two Oceans Aquarium, the penguins at Boulders, the cableway, picnics at Kirstenbosch and the calm tidal pools at St James give plenty of variety. Its main drawbacks are the driving between sights and the need for normal city street sense.

Victoria Falls can be thrilling for children of about eight and up, with game drives and hippos on the river. But it is a malaria area, medical care is basic, and many activities and lodges have minimum ages, which rules it out for most families with toddlers.

Victoria Falls is the simpler place to get around. The falls entrance, the bridge and the main hotels are within walking distance by day, activity operators collect you from your lodge, and you can cross into Zambia on foot. You only need taxis for the outlying lodges and after dark.

In Cape Town the centre and the Waterfront are walkable, and MyCiTi buses reach the Atlantic beaches. But the peninsula, False Bay and the Winelands mean driving on the left or using ride-hailing almost every day, and taking a car door to door at night.

Cape Town has the wider range, with chains and local labels at the V&A Waterfront, South African design, ceramics and leather in Woodstock and on Bree Street, and wine and rooibos to take home. It is good for browsing, though not a reason to visit.

At Victoria Falls, shopping is the curio market and the traders on the road. You will find stone sculpture, carvings and baskets, which you bargain for, and a few fixed-price galleries. There is nothing in the way of fashion or design.

Cape Town is much easier on the budget. Tasting menus, estate wine, car hire and ride-hailing all cost far less than in Europe or North America. Rooms by the Atlantic beaches in December and January are the main exception.

Victoria Falls is expensive even before the activities. Lodges charge safari rates, much of the food is imported, and park fees on both sides, cruises, rafting and flights quickly add up. Staying in a backpacker lodge and choosing one or two activities helps, but only so much.

Cape Town has a musical tradition of its own in Cape jazz, a major annual jazz festival, and summer sunset concerts on the Kirstenbosch lawns. For more formal evenings there is opera and ballet at Artscape and South African drama at the Baxter.

At Victoria Falls, the drumming, dance troupes and marimba bands you will hear play at dinners and lodges for visitors. They can be fun, but there is no theatre or concert hall.

Neither has a bathing tradition, but Cape Town is easier for a slow, restful stay. You can have long lunches on wine estates, take morning swims in the False Bay tidal pools, spend quiet afternoons in Kalk Bay, and use good spas in the Winelands.

At Victoria Falls, the calm is in the private lodges upstream, with treatment decks above the Zambezi and pool afternoons between game drives. The town itself is busy with rafting and bungee crowds, and with traders.