Durango, Colorado or Tucson?

Neither city is a place for swimming, and the difference lies in where you get wet. In Durango it means cold water: tubing the Animas through town, or the small swimming area at Lake Nighthorse and the sandy edges of Vallecito Lake in a short summer. In Tucson it nearly always means a resort pool, with short-lived pools in Sabino Canyon after rain and the Gulf of California four hours away in Mexico.

Tucson has the stronger table because it has a cuisine of its own. Sonoran Mexican cooking runs from mesquite-grilled carne asada to the bacon-wrapped Sonoran hot dog, with the most traditional family kitchens along South 12th Avenue and in the barrios south of downtown. Desert ingredients such as tepary beans and prickly pear give the food a local stamp.

Durango's cooking is narrower and Western: green-chile plates, steakhouses, and Colorado lamb and trout. Its craft breweries are the real draw, and there are a lot of them for a town its size. Neither city has much fine dining, but only Tucson is worth planning meals around.

Tucson has more to see, and it takes two or three days. Mission San Xavier del Bac, with its painted and gilded interior, is a sight of national standing. The adobe streets of Barrio Viejo and El Presidio carry the city's Spanish and Mexican past, and the Pima Air & Space Museum is unlike anything else in the region.

Durango's sights in town are the steam railway, with its depot and roundhouse museum, and a few blocks of Victorian brick and sandstone, which an afternoon covers. Its most remarkable heritage, the ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings, lies out in the country rather than in town.

Tucson gives you more of a night out. The student patios and dive bars of Fourth Avenue and the cocktail bars, rooftops and few dance floors of Congress Street are a short walk apart, and weekends in term time are lively. A Durango evening means a taproom, a patio on Main Avenue or a saloon with a piano, and the streets are quiet before midnight. Neither is a clubbing city, and Tucson also calms down in summer when the students leave.

Both are superb outdoor bases, but Durango's mountains are bigger and wilder. The Weminuche Wilderness has peaks above 4,000m, the Colorado Trail starts just north of town, and the mountain biking is among the best known in the country. Rafters run the Animas right through the centre, and a full ski resort is half an hour away in winter.

Tucson's draw is the Sonoran Desert itself. Saguaro forests fill the national park on both sides of the city, Sabino Canyon has canyon trails, and the road up Mount Lemmon climbs from cactus to pine. Add serious road cycling and well-known birding, and Tucson is the better choice from autumn to spring, when Durango's high country is snowbound.

Both have a good spread of outings, all needing a car, but they differ in character. Durango's are mountain and ancient history: the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde, the steam train up the Animas canyon to the mining town of Silverton, the ruins at Aztec and the hot springs at Pagosa Springs.

Tucson's are frontier and small-town: Wild West Tombstone, the steep Victorian streets of Bisbee, the artists' village of Tubac with Tumacácori mission beyond it, and the Sonoita and Elgin wineries. Biosphere 2 and Phoenix lie to the north. The list is varied and easy-going rather than spectacular.

Both work for families, in different ways. Durango is an outdoor family vacation, with the steam train, gentle rafting and tubing, an alpine coaster and ziplines in summer, beginner slopes in winter and Mesa Verde's ladders. It has nothing indoors for a rainy day, though, and the altitude can tire small children at first.

Tucson has the attractions Durango lacks: the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, a zoo, a children's museum, a planetarium and the giant aircraft. It works best from October to April, because summer heat makes the outdoor sights hard going. In both cities the car does much of the work.

Durango's small, flat centre is easier on foot. Main Avenue takes a quarter of an hour to walk end to end, and the river trail links parks for walkers and cyclists. Tucson's walkable core is the strip along the single streetcar line between downtown, Fourth Avenue and the university, and slow buses serve the rest of a very wide city. In both, the trailheads and main sights need a hire car, though Tucson's traffic is mild and parking is easy.

Both sell the Southwest, but Tucson has more of it. Native American jewellery, Tohono O'odham baskets and Mexican folk art fill its old-town galleries, Fourth Avenue adds vintage and independent shops, and each winter the gem and mineral show fills the city with dealers.

In Durango, shopping is one stroll along Main Avenue. The turquoise, the Navajo and Pueblo silver and the bike and fishing shops are worth a look, and there is little beyond them.

Tucson is the cheaper of the two. Its mid-range hotels cost less than in the bigger Southwest cities, taquerías and hot dog stands make eating cheaply easy, and the summer heat brings real bargains.

Durango is a mountain resort. Rooms are scarce and priced to match in summer and ski season, restaurants charge full American prices, and the steam train and guided trips add up. Both need a hire car, and Durango's savings come in spring and late autumn.

Tucson has a proper, if small, season: the symphony, Arizona Opera and the Arizona Theatre Company, touring Broadway shows at Centennial Hall, and concerts at the restored Fox Theatre and the Rialto. Mariachi runs through the city's life. Most of the programme runs from autumn to spring.

Durango's stage life peaks in summer, with a chamber and orchestral festival, a Victorian melodrama where the audience boos the villain, and cowboy music over a chuckwagon supper. Outside summer there is little on most nights.

Tucson does resort wellness better. It is one of the original homes of the American destination spa, with long-established retreats in the Catalina foothills offering fitness, desert walks and meditation, and large resort spas with pools facing the mountains.

Durango has what Tucson lacks: natural hot springs. There are mineral pools just north of town and more at Pagosa Springs and Ouray, ideal after a day of riding or skiing, though its spas are mostly hotel massages. Choose Tucson for a sunny, pampered break and Durango for a soak after a hard day outdoors.