sfentoni cave

Beautiful scenic coach drive from Heraklion area up to the Sfentoni Caves. Tour is guided and interesting but quite short & smaller groups would have made listening easier. Cave well lit with metal walkways & platform viewing areas. Nice café with spectacular views of local area but insufficient staff to cater for the coach party quickly. Toilets, free wifi & small gift shop. Worth a visit if you are in the area.

I work in a Cave, so I'm used to see concretions. But here, they were magnificient, the lights are perfect.The guide walked a bit fast, maybe it was because the other tourists would not stop touching the concretions and taking pictures with flash. I would definitely recommend this place!

big illuminated cave, the path inside is metal platforms which is supposed to be suitable for hadikapts but sometimes very steep. way down to the cave from the parking lot is a long way down (250 meters or so) which is steep ans hard for the disables. you cannot enter without a guide which is good or bad dpend on your point of view (extra value from eplanations versus waiting 40 minutes at a time...(. we saw 2 bats when there are 4 kinds and arround 400 in the cave -a bit dissapointment for kids when you say thid is a bat-cave" as written everywhere in regards to it.the tour inside is not very long, as only 3 caves of the 7-caves-system is open for men - which is good in terms of wildlife preservation.

My husband and I stopped by to tour the cave on our way to Chania. The trek there was quite enjoyable with some very nice views of the mountainside. Be aware however, that there are some serious twists and turns as you travel up the mountain!Upon our arrival to Sfentoni Cave we were told the next tour would begin in 40 minutes. That gave us time to take in some of the surrounding views, have a cold water and charge our cell phones. There is a cafe serving drinks with a nice open seating area, clean wc's, and a gift shop close to the parking lot.To enter the cave, you must pay 4 euros per person. The tour lasted 20-30 minutes and you only get to see a small portion of the cave. The tour itself was mildly interesting. I enjoyed viewing the stalagmites and stalactites, something which I haven't seen since I was a kid.Personally I enjoyed the experience of driving to the cave and seeing the cave as a whole package. I wouldn't recommend going out of your way to tour the cave, it just wasn't that amazing.

A cool, cool reprieve from the blazing hot sun. I was lucky enough to get a print out of the history of this cave and find it truly amazing!! It's beautiful and the colored lights are a great effect. And contrary to another reviewer, the cave was most certainly NOT "full of bats". The tour guide was very informative but the info I had was much more so. It was also a lot of fun getting to the cave, as you are travelling a road that gets very narrow in places, but the views are spectacular. I definitely recommend a trip to Sfentoni Cave! It was damp, cool and very interesting!

The cave is nice, but wet and full of bats, be careful not to awake them. The guy there is real fun, his English is funny and he sounds as he is singing and not talking, but he seems to know a lot for the cave. It's worth to see if you are in the area.

this was really a drive to get here AND we were Pleasantly blown away by the magnificence of these caves... 5 million years old!!!I must see on Crete!!

The cave itself is well worth seeing and is VERY interesting, and maybe even thrilling. The guide is very nice and informative , However, the from Heraklion to Zoniana is an attraction itself with windy narrow roads . very picturesque!

The cave is nice but quite small,only 140m.The tour guide speaks greek and english.I was surprised that the cave is warm,we were told it's 17 degrees there all year round so dont worry about being cold as in other caves but definitely you should wear trainers as at some places the path is slippery.The entrance fee is 4 euros and it takes about half an hour to see the cave.There is a snack bar with beautiful view of the mountains but unfortunately they dont cook.The only food they have is ham and cheese sandwich.

We arrived and were informed the next tour would be in 30 minutes. There is a lovely bar area where you can wait and look out over the hills, an amazing view. The tour stated on time and the guide spoke both Greek and English. The cave was amazing and the tour guide fascinating. He welcomed questions and allowed sufficient time for photographs.Definately well worth the trip.

To be fair, this is not a review of the cave itself, which we were unable to see. It is a review of the Officials at the site of the Sfentoni Cave - and a word of caution to anyone who is planning to make the long trip to the cave.My wife and I drove to the Sfentoni cave from the city of Rethymno. We had heard from the tourist information office in Rethymno that the cave is spectacular - and it may be that it is spectacular. It is about an hour and a half drive from Rethymno to reach the cave, which is located in the mountains and, at least once you reach the mountain roads, it requires driving on very narrow and winding roads (we were almost run off the road by a speeding bus coming around a curve in the opposite direction).Before deciding to go to the cave -- on the way to another destination -- we asked the tourist information office to check whether the cave was open during the winter and the times that we could visit. He called the site and was told that the cave would be open on Saturday until 14:30. Nothing more than this was said about visiting times.After making the long journey to the cave, we arrived there at 12:40 (the time is important) and saw two people sitting outside the entrance of the cave. As we learned from what transpired when we walked up to them, they were the guide and another tourist site official. We asked them where we should pay to enter the cave and they said that we could only enter the cave in an organized tour with the guide and the next tour was in 50 minutes, at 13:30. We asked if there were people in the cave now and, not surprisingly, since our car was the only car in the tourist parking lot, we were told that no one was in the cave (and from the answer we received it seemed fairly clear that no one had visited the cave any time that day). Since no one was in the cave and we could not wait 50 minutes to begin the 30 minute tour of the cave, we asked whether the guide could take us now -- since he would finish before 13:30 in the unlikely case that someone else arrived. The official said no. We asked why, especially since there was no tour that began whenever it was that they decided that the previous tour should begin. The official shrugged. We said that in that case we would have to go - and the official shrugged again.What can be learned from our experience. 1) If you go to the Sfentoni Cave, you should try to arrive by half past the hour (and at least an hour before the cave closes), unless of course the cave official decides that the hours for tours on the day that you visit are at a different time -- for example, on the hour. 2) Don't go to the cave if you don't have a lot of time to spend there -- preferably close to an hour and a half. 3) Perhaps it is also possible to learn from this that there are some tourist officials in Greece who think that they are paid a salary to sit and be physically present at their place of work, doing the absolute minimum that they can. I would like to add that in our experience this was an isolated case, as at the archiological sights that we visited in Crete, we did not have similar experiences -- and in general Greek hospitality and willingness to be helpful is much higher than can be found in most other countries.

We visited the Sfentoni cave since we wanted something else besides sunbathing from our vacation. We found it a bit hard to get there, but after we arrived, it was worth the trip.The cave was very impressive and the guide (included in the entrance price of 4e) told us a bunch about the cave. The temperature in the cave is about 17C, but it's very humid. I didn't need an extra jacket or anything and the coolness was just refreshing :)The tour was quite short though, I would have hoped to visit more rooms, and the guide kept ushering us out. There were a bunch of small children with their parents and I think some of the kids were scared of the darkness of the cave. There was still plenty of light to see where you were going.If you want to see something different, I'd recommend visiting Sfentoni cave in Zoniana.

Lots of parking upon arrival and the tickets, like everywhere else in Crete, were under €5 each. We arrived 10 minutes before the next tour so sat and admired the views from the cafe balcony (a VERY interesting drive!).Our guide spoke perfect English and seemed to understand both the German and French in the group which was lovely.The cave has tread plate suspended gangways and low heat emitting lights so that no damage is caused to the environment. The guide explained about how easy it is to kill a staligmite or staligtite and about the different species living in the cave.I would highly recommend a visit, we learned a lot about caves and the experience is one I'm very glad I tried.I would advise sensible shoes and something warm to put on, such as a shawl, as it can be a wee bit chilly and damp.

Пещера по объёму невелика, но очень красива. Подсветка меняет цвет. Только с сопровождающим экскурсоводом ( англ. и греч. языки) . Небольшое кафе для ожидания оного.

Den lilla byn var pittoresk. På plats fanns en liten bar med en fantastisk utsikt. Vi tog en kaffe och toast, de hade även inhemska drycker. Visning av grottan sker varje timme och pågår i 25 minuter. Det är en fantastisk grotta. Rekommenderas.