Johannesburg or Knysna?

Johannesburg has no beach at all. It sits high on the inland plateau, and swimming means a hotel or garden pool, or a drive to the dams at Hartbeespoort.

Knysna gives you real Indian Ocean beaches, though not on its doorstep: Brenton-on-Sea and Buffalo Bay are long and wild, Noetzie is a small cove under forested cliffs, and Plettenberg Bay has the more sheltered swimming. The lagoon shallows around Leisure Isle are calm enough for small children. Watch for rip currents and sudden cold water on the open beaches.

Johannesburg has much more range. Weekend shisa nyama grills in Soweto, bunny chow and kotas on the street, Fordsburg's Indian and Middle Eastern kitchens and Mozambican peri-peri prawns sit alongside the polished restaurants of Parkhurst, Rosebank and Sandton.

Knysna does one thing well: seafood. Lagoon-farmed oysters, line fish and platters on the Thesen Island quays make for long, relaxed lunches, and the local brewing tradition adds something of its own. Beyond seafood and braai, though, there is little variety, and no street food or big markets.

Here the gap is wide. Johannesburg holds some of the most important modern-history sites on the continent: the Apartheid Museum, the old prison at Constitution Hill, the Hector Pieterson Memorial and Mandela's former home on Vilakazi Street. The Origins Centre, the university art museum and the Art Deco inner city add depth, even if the sites are scattered and best reached with a guide.

Knysna offers a stone church at Belvidere, the ruins of the Millwood gold-rush settlement and small museums on the timber trade. A morning covers it, and the Heads at the lagoon mouth are the landmark people actually come to see.

Johannesburg goes out late and loud, to South African house and amapiano, on Braamfontein's rooftops, along Melville's 7th Street and in Sandton's clubs. The one rule is to arrange rides in advance, since the scenes are spread across suburbs.

Knysna's evenings start with sundowners on a waterfront deck and usually end after a long dinner. A few pubs stay open, and the town livens up in high summer and during its festivals, but there are no clubs, and most nights are quiet well before midnight.

Knysna is one of South Africa's great outdoor bases. Indigenous yellowwood forest, the Outeniqua mountains, the lagoon for paddling and sailing, Robberg's seal colony and Tsitsikamma's gorge all lie within an hour, and southern right whales come close inshore in winter and spring.

Johannesburg's outdoors is different in kind. It is open Highveld grassland with leafy suburbs and the Walter Sisulu Botanical Garden, where black eagles nest. Its real asset is game: Pilanesberg's lions, elephants and rhino make a long day out, which forest-bound Knysna cannot offer in the same way.

Johannesburg has the stronger outings. Pretoria is an easy Gautrain ride for the Union Buildings and the Voortrekker Monument, and the Cradle of Humankind, a World Heritage Site, takes you to the Sterkfontein Caves, where some of the oldest human ancestors were found. Cullinan's diamond mine and Sun City fill further days.

From Knysna the Garden Route offers a chain of pleasant small towns, Plettenberg Bay, Wilderness and Mossel Bay, rather than major destinations. The most rewarding outing crosses the mountain passes to Oudtshoorn for the Cango Caves and the ostrich-boom mansions of the dry Little Karoo.

Knysna makes the easier family vacation. Children can paddle in the lagoon shallows, take a boat through the Heads, walk beside rescued elephants and spend a day among the primates and birds near Plettenberg Bay, all at an unhurried pace from a self-catering house.

Johannesburg has more built attractions, such as Gold Reef City's rides, the zoo and the Sci-Bono Discovery Centre. The sprawl and the lack of safe walking make each day a series of car journeys, so many families treat it as a stopover on the way to the bush.

Both need a car, and neither is a place to rely on buses. What differs is the shape. Johannesburg is a vast metropolis where the Gautrain links the airport, Sandton, Rosebank and Pretoria, and ride-hailing covers the rest, with walking kept to compact areas by day.

Knysna is small: the centre, the waterfront and Thesen Island are within walking distance of one another. Everything worth the trip, though, lies along the N2 or up forest roads, so most visitors pick up a hire car at George airport.

Johannesburg is the shopping city of the two by a long way. Sandton's malls carry international luxury labels, Rosebank's Sunday rooftop market is the place for beadwork, wire art and textiles, and Parkhurst and the inner city have local designers and galleries.

Knysna is for browsing rather than shopping: boutiques and galleries on Thesen Island, craft stalls and, most distinctively, furniture and turned pieces made from local yellowwood and stinkwood.

Both are good value for visitors from Europe, North America or Australia. Johannesburg comes out a little cheaper on meals, wine and comfortable rooms. Its extra costs are ride-hailing, guided tours and the premium charged in safer districts such as Sandton.

In Knysna, car hire is unavoidable and coastal rooms are at their dearest in the South African summer vacation around December and January. On the other hand, most of what you came for, the trails, beaches and lagoon, costs little.

Johannesburg has a real stage. The Market Theatre in Newtown, known for its protest theatre under apartheid, still premieres South African drama, and the Soweto Theatre and Joburg Theatre add plays, musicals and ballet. The music runs deeper still: jazz from the Sophiatown tradition, the Joy of Jazz festival, gospel and kwaito.

Knysna has no theatre season or orchestra. Live music means weekend bands in pubs and the concerts that come with its festivals.

Knysna is the place to unwind. Its slow pace, lagoon-deck mornings, forest lodges and scattered yoga and massage retreats make rest part of the day rather than an appointment.

Johannesburg is fast and business-minded, and its offer is well-run day spas in the northern suburbs with fair prices for treatments. For real quiet, people from the city drive out to the Magaliesberg or a bush lodge.