Puerto Plata or Punta Cana?

The water is warm enough to swim all year in both places, but Punta Cana's beach is on another scale. About 50km of pale, reef-sheltered sand runs from Juanillo to Uvero Alto, calm and shallow outside almost every hotel. Catamaran trips to Saona add a day on white sand.

Puerto Plata's swimming is good but more scattered. The town beach is for strolling, Playa Dorada and Cofresí serve the resorts, and the calmest clear water is in Sosúa's horseshoe bay, half an hour away. Cabarete and Encuentro are for surf and wind rather than a lazy swim, and Atlantic swells can be rough in winter.

Neither is a place to travel for the food, but Puerto Plata puts more of the country on your plate. Its comedores and beach shacks serve la bandera, mofongo and whole grilled fish, and Sosúa and Cabarete add a decent run of international places by the sea.

In Punta Cana you mostly eat at resort buffets and themed restaurants, where there is plenty of food but little you will remember. There are lobster grills in Bávaro and at the Cap Cana marina. For Dominican cooking you have to seek out the workers' comedores away from the resorts.

The gap is wide here. Puerto Plata has a real old town around Parque Independencia, with restored wooden houses trimmed in gingerbread, the cathedral of San Felipe, the sixteenth-century fort at the end of the Malecón and the Amber Museum in an old mansion. It fills a pleasant day rather than a week, but it is there.

Punta Cana grew up as a resort coast from the 1970s onwards and has no historic core or museums. Anyone interested in heritage has to leave, and Santo Domingo is the trip most worth making.

Nightlife is modest in both, and the difference is one of style. Puerto Plata's evenings are local and low-key, with people gathering at kiosks along the Malecón and merengue and bachata playing in small clubs. For a livelier night, the beach bars of Cabarete are forty minutes away.

Punta Cana's nights out are built for visitors. Bávaro has big party-show clubs, including one inside a limestone cave, and open-air bars and colmados playing reggaeton late. It suits one or two big nights with a group, with a taxi between venues, rather than a wander down to the seafront.

Puerto Plata has the landscape that Punta Cana lacks. Mount Isabel de Torres rises straight behind the town, with cloud forest and a botanical garden at the top. The green ridges of the Cordillera Septentrional run inland, Damajagua's chain of limestone pools is half an hour away, and Cabarete's trade winds have made it a famous kitesurfing spot.

Punta Cana is flat country of scrub and coconut groves, so its outdoors is mostly on the water. You can snorkel the reef, take a boat to Saona and its starfish pool, kitesurf at Cabeza de Toro or go deep-sea fishing. On land, the choices are the lagoon trails of the Indigenous Eyes reserve and the Hoyo Azul sinkhole.

Puerto Plata is better placed for days out. Santiago, the country's second city, is about an hour away over the mountains. La Isabela keeps the foundations of the settlement Columbus founded in 1493, and the sandbars of Cayo Arena make a fine day on a boat.

From Punta Cana, the nearer options are the basilica at Higüey, the Mediterranean-style stone village of Altos de Chavón and the fishing village of Bayahibe. Santo Domingo's Zona Colonial is the one big draw, but it means a long day with two and a half hours on the road each way.

Punta Cana is the easier choice with children. Many resorts are designed around them, with splash parks, waterslides and kids' clubs. The reef-sheltered beaches at Bávaro and Juanillo shelve gently, so a whole week can pass without leaving the resort.

Puerto Plata works through its resorts at Playa Dorada and Cofresí and the calm bay at Sosúa, and the cable car and the Damajagua pools win over older children. Away from the resorts, though, uneven pavements and unruly traffic make it harder going with small ones.

Puerto Plata at least has a centre you can walk, with the old town and the Malecón close together. Guaguas run along the coast road to Sosúa and Cabarete. Beyond that you need taxis, tours or a hired car, and the roads are poorly lit after dark.

Punta Cana has no centre at all. Its resorts sit behind gates along some 50km of coast, the roads have few pavements and the sand is the only good place to walk. Almost every trip means a hotel taxi or a pickup for a tour.

In both places shopping means souvenirs, mostly the island's larimar, amber, cigars and rum. Puerto Plata has more local character, with amber from its own mountains, jewellery shops in the old town and the street hung with colourful umbrellas. Punta Cana offers a more polished choice in the open-air malls of Bávaro and Cap Cana, with resort fashion and a few upscale labels, as well as craft stalls on the beach where haggling is expected.

Puerto Plata is the cheaper base, especially if you step outside the package. Comedor meals, guagua rides and simple guesthouses in town cost little, though taxis and excursions soon add up.

Punta Cana is priced above the rest of the country. Its packages can be good value, but fixed tourist taxi fares, boat trips and beachfront restaurants push the bill up, and Cap Cana is firmly at the expensive end. Cheaper beds are found in the small apartment hotels around Los Corales.

Neither has theatre or a concert season, and in both the music worth hearing is merengue and bachata from bars and live bands. Puerto Plata adds its February carnival of costumed devils and parades. Punta Cana has glossy acrobatic and tribute spectacles in Bávaro on top of the nightly resort shows.

Punta Cana is the better place to unwind. Its larger resorts have proper spas with hydrotherapy circuits and treatments using local cacao and coconut. With nothing outside the gate pulling you away, the pace stays slow, especially at an adults-only resort.

Puerto Plata offers less: resort spas, massages on the beach and yoga in Cabarete. The town itself is loud with motorbikes and music.