Negril or Trinidad, Cuba?

Negril's whole day revolves around the shore. Seven Mile Beach is long, soft and gently shelving, with water flat enough to swim far out. Bloody Bay offers a quieter stretch, and at the West End you swim off cliffs, using ladders and rock platforms to get in and out of deep water.

Trinidad has only two options. Playa Ancon is a good strip of pale sand with reef snorkelling, about 15 minutes away on its peninsula, and La Boca is a smaller beach used by locals. You go to the beach between days in town rather than living on it.

Neither town is a reason to travel for the food, but the two kitchens are very different. In Negril the good meals are jerk from smoking roadside drums, fish and lobster grilled at beach shacks, and ital vegetable stews from Rastafarian stalls. The beachfront restaurants tend towards international resort menus.

Trinidad serves Cuban home cooking of rice, black beans and roast pork in paladares set in colonial houses or at your casa's own table. You drink canchanchara from a clay cup. Supply shortages mean menus repeat from place to place.

This is where the two differ most. Negril grew from a fishing village into a resort within living memory, and apart from the 1890s lighthouse on the West End cliffs it has nothing to visit.

Trinidad is a sugar-era town preserved almost whole. It has cobbled lanes, pastel houses with wooden window grilles, the Plaza Mayor with its church and planters' mansions, the Museo Romantico and the San Francisco bell tower. The museums are small, and wandering the streets is the real pleasure.

The two are about equally lively after dark, in different settings. Negril starts the evening with sunset and cliff divers on the West End, then moves to bars on Seven Mile Beach that take turns hosting party nights, with barefoot rum punch drinking until late in winter.

In Trinidad people gather on the stone steps by the Plaza Mayor to dance salsa, and the late finish is in a nightclub inside a cave above town. Each town offers only a few nights before the routine repeats.

Trinidad has more to offer on land. The Escambray mountains rise behind the town, and Topes de Collantes, under an hour away, has forest trails down to the Salto del Caburni waterfall and on to El Nicho. Horse rides cross the Valle de los Ingenios, and Ancon has a reef for diving.

Negril's outdoors is mostly the water. You can snorkel off the cliffs, dive walls and wrecks, or paddle and sail from the beach, and the Great Morass wetland lies just inland. It has no mountains or real hiking, and waterfalls such as YS Falls are one to two hours away.

Trinidad has far better trips on its doorstep. The sugar mills and Manaca Iznaga tower of the Valle de los Ingenios start just outside town. French-founded Cienfuegos and old Sancti Spiritus are each about an hour and a half away, and Santa Clara's Che Guevara memorial is a little further.

From Negril, almost every outing means a long drive on slow coast roads. Montego Bay and the great houses of Rose Hall and Greenwood take a full day, and the Appleton rum estate and Treasure Beach are around two hours off.

Negril is the easier choice with children. The beach shelves gently into calm water, and several large resorts on the strip have pools, kids' clubs and meals on site. Parents should expect persistent vendors and openly smoked ganja on the beach and the road.

Trinidad is friendly to children, and Ancon's shallow water makes a good family day. But the old town's big uneven cobbles defeat pushchairs, and power cuts and gaps in familiar foods and medicines make it hard going with small children.

Trinidad is the easier place to get about, at least in the centre. The old town is compact, many lanes are closed to cars and everything is a short walk away, though the cobbles and slopes call for good shoes.

Negril stretches along a single road, with a long, hot walk between the beach and the West End and few pavements on the cliff road. Shared route taxis help. Outside the centre, both towns depend on taxis, tours or a hired car, and in Negril that means driving on the left on narrow roads.

Neither town is for serious shopping, but Trinidad has more worth buying. Its craft lanes sell hand embroidery and crochet tablecloths and blouses, family workshops throw pottery at the wheel, and small galleries sell paintings by local artists.

Negril offers carvings, beads and T-shirts from the craft market and from vendors on the sand. The best things to take home are Jamaican rum, coffee and hot sauce.

Trinidad costs less day to day. Most visitors stay in a casa particular with breakfast included, much of the music is free and the old town needs no transport. Taxis, tours and paladar meals push the bill up, and you need cash because cards are often refused.

Negril's beachfront resorts and visitor restaurants charge international prices, and boat trips and taxis add up quickly. Cheaper stays are possible in the cliff cottages on the West End, eating at jerk stands and patty shops.

Trinidad's music is richer and more varied. Every night there is son and salsa at the Casa de la Musica and older musicians singing traditional Cuban song at the Casa de la Trova. The Palenque de los Congos Reales hosts Afro-Cuban drumming and rumba rooted in the town's slave history.

Negril offers reggae, ska and dancehall from beach stages most nights, with well-known Jamaican artists in winter. Neither town has theatre, classical concerts or opera.

Negril is much better for a restful stay. The West End has small cliff-top retreats with yoga decks over the water and open-air massage huts, and the big resorts run full spas. It is calmest away from the busy middle of the beach, where vendors and touts gather.

Trinidad's slow pace means rocking chairs on doorsteps and shaded courtyards rather than treatments. Roosters at dawn, horse carts on the cobbles, music late into the night and power cuts that stop the fans all make deep rest hard.