Hop on hop off Cape Town, Uber or MyCiTi: how to choose

Anyone weighing a hop on hop off bus in Cape Town is choosing between three things that overlap only partly. The red bus is a ticketed sightseeing circuit that stops at more than 30 places and carries recorded commentary.⁸ MyCiTi is the city's own bus system, which you ride with a loaded card and which serves ordinary commuters and visitors alike. Uber is an app that sends a car to the door.

Each does one thing well. The bus gives you a route with the sights already stitched together, which is its whole point. MyCiTi gives you the cheapest way to cover distance, and it names the V&A Waterfront and Camps Bay among the places it serves.^9,10 The app gives you a door-to-door ride at any hour, since Uber says it takes requests 24/7 in Cape Town.¹¹ None of them replaces the others for a whole trip.

The honest way to compare them is by the question you are asking. If the question is how to see the main sights without planning, the bus wins. If it is how to get from your hotel to the beach cheaply, MyCiTi wins. If it is how to get home after dark with a bag of shopping, the app wins. The rest of this page puts the published numbers behind each of those answers.

Everyone who rides MyCiTi needs a myconnect card, which costs R40 from station kiosks or participating retailers, and children younger than 4 travel free.³ You then choose between paying per journey and an unlimited pass. MyCiTi sells passes of 1, 3 and 7 days, priced at R130, R290 and R420, which give unlimited travel at any time of day for that many consecutive days.^20,2

Paying per journey is cheaper if you only ride a few times. A trip of 0 to 5 km costs R19.50 at peak and R15.00 off peak, and one of 5 to 10 km costs R25.50 at peak and R19.50 off peak.¹⁶ The peak periods are Monday to Friday 06:45-08:00 and 16:15-17:30, and starting outside them, or at any time on weekends and public holidays, costs less.²¹ You can also change bus or route within 45 minutes and pay one fare for the whole distance.¹⁷

MyCiTi is a commuter system first and a sightseeing one second. It lists the V&A Waterfront, Canal Walk, Camps Bay and the Sea Point Pavilion among its leisure destinations, but it does not narrate the city or loop past the cableway on a fixed circuit.^9,10 Use it as a cheap, frequent way to reach a single beach or a single museum rather than as a tour.

Camps Bay is the stop that tests all three. On the red line it is stop 8, the Camps Bay strip, listed for the beach, lunch and sunset cocktails, and the first bus of the summer column reaches it at 09H06.^27,28 On MyCiTi the beach is among the destinations the system names, and in the app you get a driver to the sand itself.¹⁰

What changes is the time of day. The bus has a last departure and its columns end at different times, so a sunset on the beach means checking when the last bus leaves the Aquarium, which is 16H45 or 17H15 depending on the column.²² An app ride has no such ceiling, and Uber says it takes requests 24/7.¹¹ A MyCiTi ride depends on its own timetable, which is on its website.

We have no official source for parking at Camps Bay, so this guide says nothing about driving there. If you hire a car, follow the City's own safe-driving tips on its visitor safety page. The simplest plan for the beach in summer is to ride the red bus out in the morning and decide at the stop whether to come back by bus or call a car.

For a first day with no plan, buy the bus ticket. It covers the sights in an order that works and explains them as you pass.⁶ Add the cable car combo if the mountain is the thing you came for, and keep a day free in case the cableway closes. A guided Bo-Kaap and city walk is on sale as a GetYourGuide listing from $39 if you prefer to spend a morning on foot.

Hop on hop off Cape Town prices only make sense next to the alternatives, so for a second or third day, switch to MyCiTi or the app. A 1-day pass at R130 costs less than the bus for an adult, though it comes without commentary or a fixed route.² If you travel as a pair on a short ride, the app's fare may come close, because the cost is shared.⁴ Use the calculator at the top of this page for the listings, and the rand figures above for the rest.

Wine is a different category. A hop-on bus ticket with a tasting at Groot Constantia is on sale as a GetYourGuide listing from $33, valid on the date of first use. None of these choices excludes the others. The most common mistake is to treat the bus as a transport system and be disappointed by the waiting, or to treat MyCiTi as a tour and miss the sights.