El Calafate or Mendoza?

Neither city is a place to swim, and both leave you looking for a pool. El Calafate's Lago Argentino is glacier-fed and wind-blown, and the Atlantic is a long day's drive away. Mendoza at least has the summer heat to make a pool welcome, plus the Potrerillos reservoir an hour away for a lakeside afternoon, though it is more for the view than for swimming.

Mendoza is the far better place to eat and drink. Its long winery lunches in Luján de Cuyo, Maipú and the Uco Valley, many courses each matched with a wine and the Andes in view, are a reason to travel in themselves, and the city adds empanadas mendocinas, wood-fired parrillas and wine bars pouring by the glass.

El Calafate has one great dish, Patagonian lamb roasted on iron crosses, plus lake trout, king crab and calafate berry everything. Beyond that, menus are shaped around tour groups. An estancia lunch is the highlight, and the Malbec on the table is likely from Mendoza anyway.

Neither is a cultural destination, but Mendoza gives you more to look at. Its post-1861 planned grid, with the tiled Plaza España, the irrigation channels along the kerbs, the foundation ruins and the Cerro de la Gloria monument above Parque San Martín, makes a pleasant day or two.

El Calafate is a young service town with no historic core. The Glaciarium is worth a visit as a primer on the ice, and the regional museum and the Walichu cave paintings fill a spare afternoon, but that is the extent of it.

Mendoza has a real evening life in the Argentine style: dinner late, then students and young locals filling the bars and pavement tables of Arístides Villanueva past midnight, quieter wine bars in Chacras de Coria and a few large clubs at weekends. El Calafate offers a pub on the main avenue, a small casino and an early night before the glacier bus.

Both are superb for landscape, but of very different kinds. El Calafate is about ice: the 70-metre face of Perito Moreno calving into the lake, crampon walks on its surface, and boat trips to the Upsala and Spegazzini glaciers, with flamingos at Laguna Nimez and empty steppe for riding. It is a spectacle to watch as much as a place to be active, and the season is short.

Mendoza is the more athletic choice. Rafting and kayaking on the Mendoza River at Potrerillos, high hiking in the Cordón del Plata, paragliding from Cerro Arco and the drive to Aconcagua fill days from spring to autumn, and winter brings skiing at Vallecitos.

Mendoza offers far more varied outings, as long as wine appeals. Cycling among the old bodegas of Maipú, the big Malbec estates of Luján de Cuyo and the high vineyards of the Uco Valley make three quite different days.

From El Calafate, the excursions are into landscape rather than to other places. The sheep estancias, some reached by boat across the lake, are the one real visit. El Chalten is three hours away and deserves its own stay.

The two are much alike for children: both work, neither is built around them. El Calafate has the drama of falling ice from the Perito Moreno walkways, the Glaciarium and estancia animals, against long drives, raw wind and age limits on glacier treks.

Mendoza is the easier place to simply live with a family, with children out late on the plazas, paddle boats in Parque San Martín, the Cacheuta pools and gentle rafting. The winery circuit and summer heat are its weak points.

Mendoza is the easier of the two. Its flat, shaded centre is good walking, the Metrotranvía runs to Maipú, buses cover the metro area, and bikes take you between wineries, though the Uco Valley and the mountains still need a car or tour.

El Calafate's single main avenue is easily walked, but there is no local transport, and everything worth seeing lies an hour or more away. Expect to book excursions or drive gravel roads in strong wind.

Mendoza has more worth carrying home, mainly bottles from small producers that rarely leave Argentina, along with olive oil, dried fruit, leather and the weekend craft fair in Plaza Independencia. El Calafate's main avenue sells sheepskin, knitwear, mate gourds and berry jam, and is most useful for buying a forgotten fleece.

In both cities most of the money goes on getting out of town, but only in Mendoza can you hold it back. In El Calafate the glacier is the reason you came, so park entry, treks, cruises and the transport to reach them are hard to cut. On top of that, the remote, seasonal town prices its summer rooms to match.

Day to day, Mendoza costs less. Ordinary hotels, buses and steak dinners are moderately priced. The bill climbs only when you add tasting fees, winery lunches and drivers, and you can ration those.

Mendoza has something to attend, and El Calafate barely anything. The Vendimia harvest festival fills the Frank Romero Day amphitheatre with a huge night show in late summer, and through the year there are the philharmonic at the Teatro Independencia, cueca folk nights and live music in bars. In El Calafate, a folk singer at an estancia dinner is about as far as it goes.

Hot water in the ground is what separates them. El Calafate has none, and no bathing tradition. A few lodges have pools, saunas and lake views, and the rest is simply the quiet of a small town under wide skies once the day's outing is over.

Mendoza has the thermal pools of Cacheuta, about 40km up the Mendoza River canyon, where people have bathed for more than a century. A public thermal park makes a good day out, and a calmer spa sits beside it. The city itself helps too, with shops shut through the hot part of the afternoon.