The Red Bus: Hop-on Hop-off in Cape Town
The open-top red sightseeing buses are run by City Sightseeing, and they solve a specific problem well: the first day or two of a trip, when you have no car, no sense of the city’s geography, and want to see where everything is before deciding what to come back to.
They are not public transport and they are not a bargain way of getting from A to B. Judged as a guided orientation that you can get on and off, they are rather good.
The routes
There are three, and one ticket covers all of them.
The Red City Tour is the central loop, taking in the city’s main sights and, importantly, stopping at the Table Mountain Aerial Cableway. For a visitor without a car, this is the most practical way to reach the cableway without an e-hail in each direction.
The Blue Mini Peninsula Tour runs further out along the coast and gives you the shoreline scenery the city is known for.
The Purple Constantia Valley Wine Tour goes into the Constantia wine valley, which is the closest serious wine country to the city. It is the only one of our wine areas you can reach on a sightseeing bus, and it means a wine afternoon without anyone having to drive.
How the ticket works
A day ticket gives unlimited hop-on hop-off travel across all three routes for that day, with commentary on board in fifteen languages and a children’s channel. Walking tours are included. There are also combination tickets that add a harbour or canal cruise, and a premium version that bundles several of those together.
Entrance fees to the attractions themselves, including the cableway, are not included unless the package says so.
Who it actually suits
It suits a first visit, a short stay, a traveller without a car, and anyone who wants Constantia or the cableway without arranging transport for each leg. It suits families reasonably well, because getting off is easy and the commentary carries some of the work.
It suits you less if you are staying a week or more, if you already have a car, or if you prefer to spend a long time in one or two places rather than seeing a lot of things briefly. The buses run on a loop and a frequency, so a leisurely stop means waiting for the next one.
Our view
Treat it as orientation rather than as the trip. One day on the bus early on will tell you which parts of Cape Town you want to give a proper day to, and it gets you to the cableway and into Constantia without a car. After that, you will almost certainly be better served by walking, e-hailing and, if the Peninsula is on the list, a car. Getting Around Cape Town sets out the alternatives.