Good morning everyone, I hope you enjoyed reading yesterday’s post, Crete Trip Report Part 1: Radisson Blu Beach Resort & Nearby Milatos Fishing Village. In today’s post, I am going to share a lot of photos from Crete Safari, a guided ATV tour around the Milatos / Sissi area of Crete. I did a little research on Trip Advisor and the ATV tour was highly rated. During the 5-6 hour guided tour, we went inside the Milatos Cave, fed monkeys in a zoo, tasted various olives at an olive oil factory, had lunch, and visited a few churches. I believe the tour cost 150 Euros total for the two of us. We shared an ATV and I drove the entire time. On the back of the ATV was a lock box, so we left our backpacks and valuables locked inside – which was a really nice ATV feature. Spoiler alert, the ATV tour was awesome and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys ATV tours :)
Our first stop on the tour was the Milatos Cave. Down in the distance, you can see the little fishing village of Milatos where we ate a delicious fish dinner the night before.
The cave has a lot of history to the Cretan people and it was really interesting to learn about the cave’s history.
We crouched into the cave, flashlights in hand. There were some bats that flew out, so if you do not like bats, you better wait outside of the cave.
Our next stop along the tour was to Amazonas Park, a zoo full of monkeys, lemurs, parrots, butterflies, and other animals. Our tour guide took us through the exhibits like a trained zoo keeper. At the zoo entrance, you can buy a bag of popcorn (2 Euros) and a cup of fresh fruit (3 Euros) and feed the monkeys and lemurs. This is one of those things you can only do on vacation, they would never let you do this in the US. If you hold the cup of fruit close to your chest, the lemurs will jump on your shoulder, reach into the cup, and take a piece of fruit. They will be your best friend until all your fruit is gone.
Next to the lemur cage, are monkeys. They a big fans of movies and love popcorn. If you hold out your hand with a big handful of popcorn, they will run over to you and take the popcorn out of your hand. Since we had leftover fruit from the lemur cage, we gave the fruit to the monkeys, which they really enjoyed.
A man and his lemur, friends for life lunch.
After I took the first photo of Laura, I told her to look less terrified. It looks like it worked. This was a crazy experience and I am so glad we spent 5 Euros on food for the monkeys.
Up next, we stopped at Vassilakis Estate, for a tour of a famous olive oil factory. We got a taste of the good life as we tried various olives, olive oils, and olive products. I’ve never been a big fan of the olives in the US, but the olives in Greece are 1000 times better.
They showed us how they used to make olive oil (crushing olives under big rocky wheels) and squeezing the olive paste until the olive oil came out. Inside, they showed us how the process has improved with automated machinery.
Lastly, here are 2 of the churches we visited during the tour. I forget how old the churches are, but they were both in really good shape.
After eating lunch, we headed back into town to drop off the ATVs. What a great afternoon. It was great to see so many different things around Crete. If you are in the area, I highly recommend the Crete Safari ATV Tour. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.
Coming up soon, I will have 2 blog posts about Malta: walking around Valletta, going on an ATV tour, kayaking around Gozo, and attending a festival. Stay tuned…