Cartagena or Salvador?

Salvador has the stronger beaches because you can reach them without a boat. Porto da Barra is a calm bay cove right in the city. The ocean beaches get cleaner and wilder as you go north to Stella Maris and Flamengo, and Praia do Forte's reef pools are about an hour away.

Cartagena's own beaches at Bocagrande are a different matter: darkish sand and cloudy water. To find clear turquoise water you need a day on the Rosario Islands or at Playa Blanca on Baru. Many visitors plan a day or two of their stay around that trip.

The two eat about equally well, but in different ways. Cartagena cooks like a Caribbean port, with fried fish, coconut rice, arepas de huevo and the coconut sweets of the Portal de los Dulces. It also has a smart tier of modern Colombian restaurants in restored colonial houses.

Salvador's Bahian cooking is the more distinctive cuisine, built on dendê oil, coconut milk and dried shrimp, with acarajé from baianas' stalls and moqueca stewed in clay pots. The eating there is mostly casual, and fine dining is harder to find than inside Cartagena's walls.

Both are UNESCO-listed colonial towns, but Salvador gives you more to see. The Pelourinho has dozens of baroque churches, led by the gilded interior of São Francisco. The Afro-Brazilian Museum, the art museum at Solar do Unhão and the ribbon-hung Bonfim church add to the picture of Brazil's first capital.

Cartagena is the better place to wander. You can walk its ramparts at sunset and climb the huge Castillo San Felipe. Its museums, though, are small, and two or three days covers the main sights.

Nights out are about as good in both, but they feel different. Cartagena's is compact and aimed at visitors: salsa bars and drummers around Plaza de la Trinidad, rooftop cocktails inside the walls, reggaetón clubs, party boats and chivas, and touts to go with them.

Salvador's evenings are more local and mostly outdoors, with plastic tables across the pavements of Rio Vermelho and the Pelourinho squares busy at weekends. Clubs are few outside Carnival, and that one week of street parties is bigger than anything Cartagena puts on.

Salvador has a little more to offer outdoors. There are humpback whales offshore from roughly July to October, sea turtles at Praia do Forte, surf breaks to the north, and the white dunes of Abaeté inside the city itself.

In Cartagena the best of the outdoors is underwater, snorkelling over the Corales del Rosario reefs, with canoe trips through the mangroves at La Boquilla. Inland the land is flat farmland, so a wallow in the Totumo mud volcano is about the only outing.

Salvador has the better choice of outings. Cachoeira, a colonial river town about two hours inland, can be combined with Santo Amaro, the birthplace of samba de roda. Praia do Forte pairs a beach with castle ruins, and ferries cross the bay to Itaparica's old town.

From Cartagena, San Basilio de Palenque, with its own language and music, makes a worthwhile half day. Beyond that, most trips are really about the water. Mompox and Santa Marta are too far for a day and need an overnight stay.

Neither city is set up for children, and the options are very similar. In Cartagena, the shaded plazas, horse carriages and the National Aviary on the way to Playa Blanca help fill the days, but the steady heat and long boat rides tire small children.

Salvador has the easier water for young swimmers in the shallows of Porto da Barra, plus the turtle centre and the capoeira in the squares. On the other hand, the old town's steep cobbles and the need to keep a close eye on belongings make it harder work.

Cartagena is much easier to get around. The walled city, San Diego and Getsemaní are a few minutes' walk apart on streets with few cars, and plentiful taxis cover Bocagrande. The main problem is the midday heat on narrow, uneven pavements.

Salvador is spread over an upper and a lower town, linked by the Lacerda Elevator, and its districts stretch a long way north along the coast. The metro is mainly useful for the airport, and the buses are hard for visitors to follow, so most trips are by taxi or ride-hailing, especially after dark.

Cartagena is slightly better for shopping, mainly because it has more design shops. Las Bóvedas, built into the city walls, sells Wayuu bags and sombreros vueltiaos. There are emerald jewellers around the Plaza de Bolívar, and boutiques of Colombian designers sell linen and straw resortwear.

Salvador's crafts are more musical and religious: berimbaus, drums, lacework and Bonfim ribbons in the Mercado Modelo. The São Joaquim market is more interesting to walk through than to shop in, and outside the old town shopping means malls full of Brazilian chains.

Salvador is the cheaper of the two. Beach-shack meals, beer, ride-hailing and simple guesthouses in Barra all cost little, and many churches and museums charge little or nothing. Carnival week is the big exception.

Cartagena is Colombia's most expensive city. Boutique hotels and the better restaurants inside the walls charge close to European rates. You can still travel cheaply by staying in Getsemaní and eating street food, but expect to bargain with boat operators and hawkers.

Salvador is much stronger for live performance. Its bloco drum groups hold open rehearsals in the Pelourinho and in Liberdade, the Balé Folclórico da Bahia dances most evenings, and the Teatro Castro Alves is home to the state symphony orchestra.

Cartagena has less to offer. There are concerts at the ornate Teatro Adolfo Mejía and a classical festival in January held in churches and courtyards. For the rest of the year you mostly hear cumbia dancers in the plazas and salsa bands in Getsemaní.

Cartagena is a little easier for a quiet break. Its colonial-house hotels have plunge pools and shaded courtyards in the middle of the old town, massages are cheap, and a few nights in a hammock on the islands slow everything down.

Salvador's best quality is its unhurried Bahian manner, not its facilities. The centre is noisy, so visitors who want rest usually choose a quiet guesthouse in Santo Antônio or a resort spa on the coast to the north.