VacationSelector
Yellow colonial houses in the walled city, Cartagena
CartagenaYellow colonial houses in the walled city
Inverness Castle above the River Ness, Inverness
InvernessInverness Castle above the River Ness

Photos: Cartagena by Dr. Thomas Liptak, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped; Inverness by Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped.

Cartagena or Inverness?

Our verdict in twelve categories, each scored against the same fixed benchmark cities, and the climate month by month, so you can choose for your trip.

Choose Cartagena for

  • beaches
  • nightlife
  • culture and sights

What lies behind each score is written up on Cartagena’s own page.

Choose Inverness for

  • nature and the outdoors
  • day trips
  • families

What lies behind each score is written up on Inverness’s own page.

Scoreboard

Twelve categories on one fixed scale from 0 to 100. The shaded stretch is the gap between the two.

Beaches & swimming. Cartagena 70, Inverness 20: Cartagena leads by 50 points.
Food & drink. Cartagena 62, Inverness 36: Cartagena leads by 26 points.
Culture & sights. Cartagena 68, Inverness 27: Cartagena leads by 41 points.
Nightlife. Cartagena 70, Inverness 28: Cartagena leads by 42 points.
Nature & outdoors. Cartagena 46, Inverness 84: Inverness leads by 38 points.
Day trips. Cartagena 33, Inverness 56: Inverness leads by 23 points.
Good for families. Cartagena 40, Inverness 55: Inverness leads by 15 points.
Getting around. Cartagena 54, Inverness 48: Cartagena leads by 6 points.
Shopping & style. Cartagena 48, Inverness 30: Cartagena leads by 18 points.
Affordability. Cartagena 60, Inverness 38: Cartagena leads by 22 points.
Live music & performing arts. Cartagena 40, Inverness 33: Cartagena leads by 7 points.
Wellness & relaxation. Cartagena 40, Inverness 30: Cartagena leads by 10 points.
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What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Cartagena and Inverness.

Your match

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders, and both match scores follow your weighting.

Cartagena
Best match
53match

Wins on beaches and nightlife with your weighting.

Inverness
40match

Wins on nature and the outdoors and day trips with your weighting.

What matters to you?

When should you go?

Pick your month. The climate figures are measured averages, not a forecast.

Cartagena in July

31 °Cdaytime high
26 °Cnight-time low
124 mmrain in the month
7 hsunshine a day
30 °Csea
13 hdaylight a day

Inverness in July

19 °Cdaytime high
11 °Cnight-time low
69 mmrain in the month
5 hsunshine a day
14 °Csea
17 hdaylight a day

Daytime high, °C

0°10°20°30°40°JFMAMJJASOND

Rainfall in the month, mm

050100150200250JFMAMJJASOND
CartagenaInverness

Where the figures come from

Inverness has no rain gauge within 25 km of the centre, so its rainfall comes from a gridded climate dataset read at the city rather than from a gauge further away.

Inverness's sunshine is measured 43 km from the centre, at Kinloss.

Temperature and rainfall are climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cartagena: 1991-2020 normals, Cartagena / Rafael Nunez (3.1 km from centre). Inverness: 2005-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Inverness / Dalcross (11.9 km from centre).

Before you go

MeasureCartagenaInverness
Official languageSpanishEnglish
CurrencyColombian Peso (COP)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsAB110 V, 60 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC-5UTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number123112 or 999
Elevation2 m7 m
Main airportRafael Nuñez International Airport (CTG)2 km from centre26 non-stop destinationsInverness Airport (INV)12 km from centre15 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year19 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureCartagenaInverness
City population914,55247,380
People per km²1,5992,289
Museums within 10 km23
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cartagena or Inverness somewhere new.

Browse every destination

Sources

Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Rainfall where no rain gauge is within 25 km is from the TerraClimate 1991-2020 climatology (Abatzoglou et al. 2018, Scientific Data), read at the city. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Non-stop route lists from the "Airlines and destinations" tables on English Wikipedia airport articles, by Wikipedia contributors, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Currency from the ISO 4217 register maintained by SIX, cross-checked against country data from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Price level from World Bank open data (PPP conversion factor for private consumption and official exchange rate), CC BY 4.0. Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm.

Category scores are our editorial verdict under rubric v3, each placed against the same fixed benchmark cities; the climate figures are measured. How the scores are set. Snapshot generated 2026-10-31. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.