Cali or Salento?

Neither city is a beach destination, and from both the sea is a separate journey. What differs is the substitute. Cali has the river pools of the Pance on its southern edge, where locals swim and picnic at weekends, and the Pacific beaches at Juanchaco and Ladrilleros are reachable as an overnight trip by road and boat.

Salento's mountain rivers are too cold and fast to swim in, so a dip means a finca pool or the water rides at the theme parks in the valley. Its nearest coast worth the trip is the Caribbean, which is much further away.

Cali is the better place to eat by some way. The street carts, morning pandebono and lunches of sancocho and aborrajados draw on both the Valle and the Afro-Colombian Pacific coast. At the Galería Alameda you can eat Pacific fish at the counters among fruits you will not have seen before.

Salento's food is narrower: trout on a big patacón, filling set lunches and tourist menus that repeat themselves. Its strength is coffee drunk on the farm where it was grown, an experience the cafés of San Antonio cannot quite offer.

Neither is a museum city, but Cali has more to see. The small colonial core of La Merced, the San Francisco tower and La Ermita, a walk among the low houses of San Antonio and the Museo La Tertulia fill a day or two, and the Museo del Oro Calima adds pre-Hispanic gold.

Salento's main sight is its own painted bahareque streets, Calle Real above all, within the UNESCO-listed Coffee Cultural Landscape, together with the view from the Alto de la Cruz. The town hangs together well as a whole, but an hour or two covers it.

This is the widest gap between the two. Cali lives for salsa. There are salsotecas playing old vinyl for serious dancers, big clubs in Juanchito running towards dawn at weekends, louder bars along Avenida Sexta and in Menga, and the week-long Feria de Cali in December. A few dance lessons before you go out are well worth it.

Salento has a couple of bars around the plaza and a game of tejo with beer and small gunpowder bangs. That makes a memorable evening, but there is no real nightlife, and on weeknights the town goes quiet early because most visitors are hiking at dawn.

Both have mountains on the doorstep, but in Salento they are the whole reason to come. The Cocora Valley is half an hour away, with wax palms up to 60m tall and a half-day loop through cloud forest and over plank bridges. Treks of several days climb into Los Nevados towards glaciated volcanoes.

Cali does well for a city. The Farallones rise behind the southern suburbs, the forests at Kilometre 18 are first-rate for birding, and Lake Calima has steady wind for kitesurfing. Here the outdoors is something to add to city life, not the main event.

The day trips are about as good from either base but differ in character. From Cali they run through the sugar country of the valley: the pilgrimage town of Buga, the Hacienda El Paraíso where the novel María is set, and Ginebra for local cooking. Popayán is better done as an overnight trip.

From Salento the outings are to other coffee towns, such as Filandia with its wooden lookout tower and Buenavista on its ridge, plus the Quimbaya gold museum in Armenia. They are easy to link up, but the towns look much alike.

Salento is the easier choice with children. The town is small, the ride in an open jeep is a treat, and horse rides, hummingbirds and coffee picking fill the days. The Parque del Café and Panaca are about an hour away. Rain and steep streets are the drawbacks.

Cali has a good zoo by the river, the Pance pools and malls for wet afternoons. But heat, traffic, uneven pavements and the need for care after dark mean families mostly take taxis between a few planned outings.

You can manage without a car in either, but for opposite reasons. Cali is a large, flat city where cheap taxis and ride-hailing do most of the work and the MIO buses cover the main avenues. Walking is pleasant only around San Antonio, Granada and the riverside.

You can cross Salento on foot in minutes, though some streets climb steeply. The difficulty is getting out of town. The Willys jeeps to Cocora leave only when they are full, and reaching other towns often means changing buses in Armenia or Pereira, so you need patience or a hired driver.

Cali has more to buy. Most of it is in big malls, with Colombian fashion, swimwear and leather goods. Particular to the city are the salsa shoes and dancewear, and the coffee and fruit stalls of the Galería Alameda, though there is no boutique quarter.

Shopping in Salento is one street: crafts, ponchos and woven bags along Calle Real, plus coffee beans from the nearby farms, which make the best thing to take home.

Both are cheap by the standards of Europe or North America. What differs is where the money goes. In Cali, hotels in Granada and San Antonio, taxis, street food and nights out dancing all cost little, and spending climbs in the northern restaurants and during the December feria.

Salento is dearer than the farming towns around it because it lives on visitors, but it has plenty of hostels and cheap set lunches. Boutique finca hotels and guided treks into the high mountains are what push the budget up.

Cali has a real performance life, and Salento has almost none. Cali has big salsa shows with full orchestras and dance-school showcases. In August, the Petronio Álvarez festival celebrates the music of the Pacific coast, and the Festival Mundial de Salsa brings in dancers from around the world. The Teatro Municipal, the Filarmónica and the long-established Teatro Experimental de Cali cover the formal stage.

In Salento, music means a guitar in a café or a band in a bar at the weekend. The nearest theatres and concert halls are in Armenia and Pereira.

In Cali, you have to go looking for rest. The city runs on music, heat and traffic, it has no bathing or spa tradition, and pampering means a hotel spa or a beauty salon. Caleños unwind by getting away from the city, to a country house with a pool in the hills around Pance, or at least to a long afternoon in a garden café on the green slopes of San Antonio.

Salento comes out ahead because calm is part of the place itself. The mild mountain climate, days that start and end early and the lack of real nightlife do much of what a spa would do elsewhere, and the farms on the surrounding hills are slower still. The catch is visitors. Saturdays, Sundays and Colombian long weekends crowd the centre, so a restful stay is best planned for midweek or based outside town.