Shooting RAW

Last week, I had a friend who showed me pictures he took of his holiday in South Africa. Following my advice he set his camera to RAW instead of JPEG which provides many controls when he develops them later. The problem is, when he converted the pictures from RAW to JPEG, he didn't apply any adjustments and optimisation that can enhance the photographs.

Here is an example.

The first picture is only converted from RAW without any control straight out of the camera.
The second has been converted with all the adjustments and optimisation.
Which one do you prefer?