Cusco or Quito?

Neither city has a beach, and both sit too high and too far inland for one to be part of the plan. The difference is what you can swim in. Around Cusco the glacial lagoons are only for looking at. Quito at least has hotel pools and warm municipal pools in the valleys below town, and from there the coast or the Galápagos make an easy extra leg of the trip.

The two eat at much the same level, and both cook hearty highland food based on potatoes and maize. Cusco brings alpaca, mountain trout and roast cuy, the picanterías and the San Pedro market, plus Novoandino tasting menus in San Blas for a special night out.

Quito is more about soups and roast pork, such as locro de papa and hornado, sugared empanadas de viento and hot canelazo on cold evenings. Its particular treat is Ecuadorian cacao and highland coffee, which are easy to taste in the old town and La Floresta. In both cities the choice thins quickly once you step away from the local cooking.

These are two of the great sightseeing cities of the Andes, but the sights are of different kinds. In Cusco the Inca city is still standing under the Spanish one. You see it in mortarless walls along Hatun Rumiyoc, in Qorikancha below Santo Domingo and in the huge zigzag ramparts of Sacsayhuamán on the hill above.

Quito's draw is colonial. It has a large and little-changed old town of gilded churches such as La Compañía, the San Francisco monastery and carved Quito school altarpieces. Its museums go further than Cusco's modest collections, with pre-Columbian art at Casa del Alabado and Guayasamín's work at the Capilla del Hombre.

Neither is a big night-out city. Cusco's scene is a tight cluster of backpacker bars and clubs a few steps off the Plaza de Armas, built around pisco sours and pub crawls, and early tour departures and the altitude cut most nights short. Quito's nightlife is more spread out and has more of a local crowd, with salsa clubs around Plaza Foch at the weekend and cocktail bars in La Floresta. Because the areas are apart, you take taxis between them rather than walking.

Both are first-rate bases for the mountains, but for different outdoor trips. Cusco is trekking country, with the Inca Trail, Salkantay and Ausangate, day hikes to Humantay lake and Rainbow Mountain above 5,000m, and rafting on the Urubamba.

Quito's landscape is volcanoes and forest. The cable car lifts you onto Pichincha from the edge of town, and Cotopaxi is about two hours south. To the west lies the Mindo cloud forest, which has birdwatching that the dry Cusco highlands cannot offer.

Cusco wins clearly here. The Sacred Valley alone gives several full days: Pisac's citadel, the lived-in Inca grid of Ollantaytambo, Chinchero, and Moray with the Maras salt pans. Machu Picchu is the outing most visitors come for, although it is long enough that many stay a night in the valley.

Quito's choice is good but shorter. Its main outings are the Otavalo market with Cotacachi, the equator monument, Mindo and the hot springs at Papallacta. They are more varied in theme than Cusco's run of Inca and colonial sites, but none of them carries the weight of the Sacred Valley.

Quito is the better place to take children, though neither is easy. At about 3,400m, Cusco brings a real risk of altitude sickness that small children may not be able to describe. The city has nothing built for them, and families often move down to the valley, where the llamas and alpacas are the highlight.

Quito is lower. It has children's attractions of its own, with the equator line, the TelefériQo, the Yaku museum and the lawns and pedal boats of Parque La Carolina, and Ecuadorians are warm towards children. Even so, short days are the rule.

Getting about takes about the same effort in both, but the cities are shaped differently. Cusco is compact. Almost everything is a steep walk from the Plaza de Armas, there is no metro, and cheap taxis handle the climbs back uphill.

Quito runs for about 40km along its valley. A metro line and bus corridors cover its length, but they are crowded and pickpockets work them, so most visitors use the metro for long hops and taxis or ride-hailing at night.

Cusco is the stronger place to shop for crafts. Its textile tradition runs deep, from natural-dye weaving cooperatives in Chinchero to the San Blas workshops making ceramics, religious carvings and silver. The catch is the factory-made stock repeated around the main square, and "alpaca" labels that are not always true.

Quito's best buys are more unusual: genuine toquilla-straw Panama hats, bean-to-bar chocolate and tagua-nut carvings. In the city itself, though, these are mostly found in one artisan market and a few galleries, and the serious buying happens at Otavalo.

Both are cheap from day to day, with set lunches, market food and taxis costing little in either. Quito is a little kinder over a whole trip, because its big costs are optional excursions to the volcanoes or cloud forest, and the Galápagos if you add them. In Cusco the Machu Picchu train and entry and guided treks like the Inca Trail are hard to avoid, and they take a large share of the budget.

Quito gives you more to do in the evenings. The nineteenth-century Teatro Nacional Sucre stages opera, dance and the national symphony, and there are folk ballet companies, baroque concerts in old-town churches and live bands in La Floresta.

In Cusco most nights mean a folkloric show or panpipes over dinner. The city comes into its own on festival days, though, with Inti Raymi at Sacsayhuamán around the June solstice and the masked dancers of Corpus Christi and Qoyllur Rit'i.

Quito has the easier escape from the effort of altitude travel. The thermal pools at Papallacta, among misty páramo hills, are about ninety minutes away and are a weekend habit for locals. El Tingo's public springs are closer still.

In Cusco, rest mostly means cheap massages around the square, hotel spas with oxygen-enriched rooms, or a riverside lodge with yoga down in the Sacred Valley. Its hot springs at Aguas Calientes and Lares are a long way from the city.