San Pedro de Atacama or Santiago?

Neither place is a beach destination, and they differ in what counts as a swim. In San Pedro it is a float in the salt lagoons of Laguna Cejar or Baltinache. The water is so salty that you stay on the surface without effort. It is an unusual hour under a fierce sun, with no shade, not an afternoon on the sand.

Santiago at least has a real coastline within reach. Viña del Mar and the central coast towns are about two hours away, but the cold Humboldt Current means most people paddle rather than swim. In the city itself, a swim means the public pools of the Parque Metropolitano or a hotel pool.

This is one of the clearest gaps between the two. San Pedro's restaurants line Caracoles and cook mostly for tour groups. The better kitchens make good use of quinoa, llama and rica-rica, but the menus start to repeat after a few nights, and there are no markets to explore.

Santiago is a place to eat well in its own right. There are sea urchins and conger eel soup at the Mercado Central, cheap counters around La Vega, set lunches in the Centro and Carmenère from nearby valleys in the modern restaurants of Lastarria and Barrio Italia. The range of international food is modest, but after a desert village it feels generous.

San Pedro's heritage is small and quiet. There is the cactus-wood ceiling of its adobe church, the hillside fortress of Pukará de Quitor, where the Atacameño held out against the Spanish, and the ancient round houses of Tulor. Half a day by bike covers it all, and it adds a human layer to the landscape rather than filling a trip.

Santiago has the museums and the national story. The Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino is the highlight. La Moneda and the Museum of Memory and Human Rights tell the story of 1973 and the dictatorship, and Lastarria and Cerro Santa Lucía make good walks. Earthquakes destroyed much of the colonial city, but there is still two or three days of sightseeing here.

There is hardly a contest. In San Pedro, evenings end with a pisco sour by a fire pit, early enough to sleep before a pre-dawn geyser tour. The night out that really counts is an astronomy tour under the desert sky.

Santiago keeps late South American hours. Bellavista has student bars and the main LGBTQ+ clubs, Lastarria and Barrio Italia have quieter wine and cocktail bars, and at weekends clubs stay busy until morning.

Both are outstanding for the outdoors, but San Pedro comes out ahead, because the landscape is the whole point and starts at the edge of the village. The Valle de la Luna is a bike ride away. The El Tatio geysers, the flamingo pools of the Salar and the Miscanti and Miñiques lagoons are each a morning's drive. Sun is reliable and the skies are among the darkest on earth. Altitude is the cost, and you need to acclimatise before going high.

Santiago's strength is variety. There are hikes on Cerro San Cristóbal and Manquehue, rafting and the El Morado glacier trail in the Cajón del Maipo, and in winter, ski days at Valle Nevado and La Parva. Smog, urban sprawl and the lack of buses to trailheads make these less easy to reach.

Apart from the desert landscapes, San Pedro has few places worth a day out. There is the white-stone oasis village of Toconao and a few tiny Andean hamlets. Further north are the old church at Chiu Chiu and the vast copper mine at Chuquicamata. Uyuni in Bolivia is a multi-day journey, not a day trip.

Santiago is a much better base for outings. Valparaíso, with its funiculars, painted hills and Neruda's house La Sebastiana, is about an hour and a half away by bus, and Viña del Mar fits into the same day. The Maipo and Casablanca wine estates make a very different kind of easy day out.

Santiago is far easier with children. The cable car and zoo on Cerro San Cristóbal, the Museo Interactivo Mirador, the amusement park in Parque O'Higgins and the playgrounds of Parque Bicentenario can fill several days. Restaurants welcome children late into the evening.

San Pedro can be a real adventure for teenagers, with sandboarding, floating in the salt lagoons and looking through telescopes. Nothing is designed for small children, though, and the big excursions mean pre-dawn starts, hours in a minibus and bitter cold above 4,000m.

You can cross San Pedro on foot in ten minutes, but there is no public transport beyond its dusty streets. That leaves tour minibuses, a hire car or bike rides that the heat and sand make harder than they look. Even getting there takes about an hour and a half from Calama airport.

Santiago has a clean, easy metro, and one card covers trains and buses. Line 1 runs from the Centro through Providencia to Las Condes, and the walks between Lastarria, Bellavista and Providencia are pleasant. Rush hour and the buses can be trying, but you only need a car for the mountains and the wine valleys.

In San Pedro, shopping means the craft market and the shops along Caracoles. They sell alpaca jumpers, woven textiles and lapis lazuli jewellery, much of it the same across the region. A warm wool layer for the dawn starts is the one truly useful purchase.

Santiago has big malls such as Costanera and Parque Arauco, luxury labels in Vitacura, and independent design and vintage shops in Barrio Italia. For crafts to take home, the workshops of Pueblito Los Dominicos, selling copper, Mapuche silver and lapis lazuli, offer more choice than San Pedro's stalls.

Santiago is clearly the cheaper of the two. Market food, set lunches, local wine, cheap metro rides and free or inexpensive museums keep daily costs moderate. Hotels in Providencia and Las Condes and shared day tours are where the money goes.

San Pedro costs more than most of Chile, because supplies are trucked across the desert and almost nothing can be reached without a tour or a car. Excursions and park fees take up a large part of any budget, and simple adobe rooms cost more than they look. Cycling to the valleys and cooking for yourself help.

San Pedro has almost no stage life. You might hear panpipes and charango in a restaurant on a busy night, or see costumed troupes dancing through the streets at Carnival and the feast of San Pedro and San Pablo.

Santiago has the Teatro Municipal, with its opera season, ballet company and philharmonic orchestra, contemporary work at the GAM, and the Santiago a Mil festival every January. Most theatre is in Spanish, but the folk, rock and Latin bands in Bellavista and the Centro need no translation.

San Pedro offers more real rest. The main draw is the Termas de Puritama, natural hot pools stepping down a reed-filled canyon. There are also lodge spas with volcano views and yoga classes in the village. The catch is the rhythm of a stay, with early alarms and thin air, so plan a few days with nothing booked.

In Santiago, the calm is outside the city, at the simple hot springs of the Cajón del Maipo or the terraced pools of Termas de Colina. The city itself is busy with cars and smoggy in winter, so Parque Forestal is the place to slow down.