Salta or San Pedro de Atacama?

Neither has a beach, and both lie far inland. The difference is in kind. In Salta, swimming means a hotel pool or a summer dip at the Cabra Corral reservoir, which locals use more for boating. San Pedro de Atacama offers the odd experience of floating without effort in the salty water of Laguna Cejar or the Baltinache pools, a memorable hour rather than an afternoon's swim.

Salta has a regional cuisine worth travelling for. The empanada salteña, humitas and tamales made with fresh corn, slow-cooked locro and Torrontés from the high valleys make meals part of the trip. The central market gives you the most local version of all this, even if fine dining is thin.

In San Pedro de Atacama you eat to refuel. A few kitchens on Caracoles cook well with quinoa, llama and rica-rica, but this is a village of a few thousand people with no market or street food, so the choice is narrow and menus repeat after a few nights.

Salta is the place for sights. The cathedral and arcaded Cabildo on Plaza 9 de Julio, the San Francisco bell tower and the Museum of High Mountain Archaeology, with its preserved Inca children from Llullaillaco, make up one of Argentina's best-kept colonial centres.

San Pedro's heritage is older but smaller. The adobe church with its cactus-wood ceiling, the Pukará de Quitor fortress and the round dwellings of Tulor fill half a day by bike. They are a backdrop to the desert rather than a reason to come.

Salta gives you a proper Argentine night out at weekends: dinner after ten, then the bars and a few dance clubs on Calle Balcarce, full of students until late, though midweek it is calm. San Pedro de Atacama has a handful of fire-pit bars on Caracoles and goes quiet well before midnight, partly because the geyser tours leave before dawn. A night out there usually means an astronomy tour.

This is San Pedro de Atacama's great strength. The Valle de la Luna, the flamingo pools of the Salar de Atacama, El Tatio steaming at sunrise and the Miscanti and Miñiques lagoons are all short or half-day trips away. The weather is reliable and the stargazing is world-class. Altitude is the only real limit.

Salta's scenery is dramatic too, from the cloud forest at San Lorenzo to the red rock of the Quebrada de las Conchas and the cactus country towards Los Cardones. More of it needs long drives, though, and the summer rain makes spring and autumn the best seasons.

Salta is the better base for visiting towns and villages as well as landscapes. Cafayate's bodegas, the adobe villages of the Quebrada de Humahuaca, colonial Cachi and the Tren a las Nubes mean long days, and some are worth an overnight stay, but these are places with lives of their own.

From San Pedro nearly every outing heads into the scenery. There are few villages worth a trip: mainly the white-stone oasis of Toconao, the old church at Chiu Chiu and the copper mine at Chuquicamata. Uyuni, across the Bolivian border, takes several days.

Salta is the easier of the two with children, though neither is built around them. The compact centre, plazas full of local families in the evening, late dinners where children are welcome and the cable car up Cerro San Bernardo make city days simple.

San Pedro suits older children and teenagers, who will love sandboarding, floating in a salt lagoon and seeing Saturn through a telescope. With young children, the pre-dawn starts, long minibus rides, bitter cold and heights above 4,000m are real obstacles.

Getting about is far simpler in Salta. Its flat colonial grid puts the churches, museums, market and cable car within walking distance, and taxis and city buses are cheap. Long-distance buses run out into the region, though most visitors still join tours or hire a car, because the mountain roads are slower than the distances suggest.

San Pedro de Atacama has no public transport beyond the village, which you can cross on foot in ten minutes along dusty, unpaved streets. For the lagoons, geysers and valleys you need a minibus tour, a high-clearance hire car or a rented bike. Even arriving means a transfer of about an hour and a half from Calama airport.

Both sell Andean crafts rather than fashion, but Salta has more choice. Its artisan market, in an old colonial house, sells the red-and-black poncho salteño, weaving, silver and leatherwork. Torrontés and local sweets make easy gifts, and there are pedestrian shopping streets and a mall too.

San Pedro's craft market and the shops on Caracoles sell alpaca jumpers, stone carvings and lapis lazuli jewellery, much of it the same as elsewhere in the region. A warm wool layer is worth buying for the freezing dawn tours.

Salta is much the cheaper stay. Central guesthouses, market meals and city transport cost little, so most of the budget goes on tours, car hire and the train excursion into the mountains.

San Pedro de Atacama is expensive for a village and dearer than most of Chile, because everything is trucked across the desert. Rooms go up to some of South America's costliest lodges, dinners are priced for visitors, and tours and park fees are hard to avoid. Set lunches, self-catering and cycling help keep costs down.

For live music, the two are far apart. Salta has a living folk tradition, while San Pedro de Atacama has almost nothing you could call a stage. In Salta's peñas on Calle Balcarce and around the old centre, zambas and chacareras run late, couples dance between the tables and local musicians drop in for a song. The provincial theatre adds the symphony orchestra and touring dance, and the Güemes vigil in mid-June and the carnival season take music into the streets.

In San Pedro, live music means panpipes and charango in some restaurants on busy evenings. Its traditional dances belong to the feast of San Pedro and San Pablo and to Carnival, when costumed troupes dance through the village.

The Termas de Puritama give San Pedro de Atacama the clear edge for a restful stay. These natural hot pools at around 30°C step down a reed-filled canyon half an hour from the village. Salta has nothing like them. Apart from hotel spas, its nearest hot springs are at Rosario de la Frontera, a long drive away, so its calm comes from the pace instead: a long siesta, slow evenings in the plaza cafés and quiet nights in San Lorenzo or on a rural estancia.

San Pedro also has lodge spas with pools facing the volcanoes, and yoga sessions are easy to find. The catch is the rhythm of a touring stay, with pre-dawn alarms and thin air, so leave a few empty days.