Taos or Winter Park, Colorado?

There is no beach to speak of in either town, so this cannot decide the choice. In Taos the nearest thing is a soak in a gorge hot spring, and the Rio Grande is a river for rafting, not swimming. In Winter Park you can paddle on Grand Lake in summer, but the cold snowmelt keeps most people out of the water.

Taos has a cuisine of its own, which Winter Park lacks. Red and green chile, posole, carne adovada and blue corn are served with conviction in old family places around the plaza and on the road to Ranchos, and horno bread from the Pueblo adds more local character.

Winter Park eats like a ski town: breakfast burritos before the lifts open, burgers and pizza, and a few steak and elk dining rooms. It feeds you well enough, but nobody chooses it for the food. Taos's range is narrow too, but at least its meals are part of the trip.

This is where the two differ most. Taos has a living thousand-year-old adobe pueblo with UNESCO status, the church O'Keeffe painted, and a cluster of small museums from the art colony, including the Harwood, the Millicent Rogers and the Fechin House. Together they make two or three unhurried days.

Winter Park's heritage is the Moffat Tunnel railway story and a small homesteading museum in Fraser. Anyone who wants a museum day has to drive to Denver.

Both towns are quiet by late evening, but they get there differently. In Taos the evening is a margarita in an adobe hotel bar or a saloon with a band, and it rarely runs past dinner. Winter Park has a louder burst at the base village when the lifts close, especially on winter weekends, before the crowd of early risers heads to bed.

Both are first-rate mountain bases, and the difference is in the landscape. Taos sets steep, demanding skiing and the climb to Wheeler Peak beside a sagebrush plateau cut by the Rio Grande gorge. That brings spring rafting through the Taos Box and rim walks under huge desert skies.

Winter Park is pure forested Rockies. It has two linked ski mountains with groomed cruisers and Mary Jane's bumps, miles of cross-country track, a well-known lift-served bike park in summer, and the moose and tundra of Rocky Mountain National Park an hour north.

Taos has the richer outings. The High Road to Santa Fe passes adobe churches at Las Trampas and the Chimayó sanctuary on the way to the galleries of Canyon Road. Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch lead into O'Keeffe country to the west.

From Winter Park the choices are Georgetown's Victorian main street and narrow-gauge railway, the boardwalk at Grand Lake, or Denver. All of them depend on the high passes, which winter storms can close.

Winter Park is built around families in a way Taos is not. The large children's ski school, tubing, sleigh rides and summer alpine slide all sit close to a walkable base village, and the free shuttle saves carrying gear.

Taos welcomes children and offers float trips, horse riding and a public pool, but there is nothing designed for them and the sights are spread across the valley. Both towns are high enough for altitude to tire children at first, though Winter Park sits higher.

Without a car, Taos offers little more than the plaza and the gallery lanes of Kit Carson Road and Bent Street. The town bus is limited, and the main sights lie kilometres apart: the Pueblo to the north, the Ranchos church to the south, the gorge bridge to the west and the ski valley up its canyon. Getting there is a long drive too, about two and a half hours from Albuquerque, so most visitors collect a hire car on arrival and use it every day.

Winter Park lets you do much more on foot and by bus. The base village keeps the lifts and slopeside lodging close together, and a free shuttle runs down the valley to the town centre and Fraser, which is enough for a ski week. Beyond the slopes, though, lodgings line a highway rather than a centre, and Grand Lake, the trailheads and Rocky Mountain National Park need a car. The drive in from Denver is shorter than the drive to Taos, but it crosses a high pass that winter snow can make hard going, so shuttle and bus services are a sensible alternative.

Taos is a real destination for art and craft. Galleries around the plaza sell landscape painting and contemporary work, and the local specialities are micaceous pottery, Rio Grande weaving, carved santos, and turquoise and silver jewellery. In Winter Park the shops sell ski tuning, bike parts and souvenirs, which is useful if you forgot your gloves but little more.

Neither is cheap, but Taos is easier on the budget. Simple motels and New Mexican diners keep the everyday costs reasonable, although the hire car adds to the total. A winter week in Winter Park quickly adds up once lift tickets, rentals and lessons come on top of resort-priced meals. A condo kitchen in Fraser helps, and a summer visit costs far less.

Taos offers performances worth planning around. On feast days such as San Gerónimo in late September, the Pueblo's traditional dances are open to respectful visitors without cameras, and a summer chamber music festival brings serious classical concerts to the valley. Winter Park's live music means free summer concerts on the grass in the town park and a band in an après-ski bar. Anything more means an evening in Denver.

Taos has the deeper tradition of slowing down. Ojo Caliente's historic pools of different mineral waters lie under the cliffs less than an hour away, primitive springs sit at the bottom of the gorge, and retreat centres and yoga studios draw on the valley's spiritual reputation.

In Winter Park, rest mostly means a condo hot tub after an active day, plus the stepped mineral pools at Hot Sulphur Springs above the Colorado River. The busy ski season leaves less room to unwind.