Milos (Pop 4,977) is 155km or 3hrs from Athens and only one hour from my last island of Sifnos. The island is 21km long by 14km wide with highest point at 748m.
Milos is mostly famous for the discovery of the famous VENUS DE MILO statue now in the Louvre in Paris. Seems like all of Greece’s bets antiquities are sitting in museums outside Greece !!! It is also famous for its volcanic ocean formations and caves and the mining of porcelain, which is a major industry with its own dock to ship around the world.
Milos may be close to Sifnos but it is completely different. It is volcanic with a huge harbour that is the remnants of an ancient caldera. It is composed of two halves – east and west, much like Maui in the Hawaiian islands! The east and centre are very fertile and flat whilst the west is very mountainous and remote with terrible dirt roads only accessible by big 4WDs or motocross. The coast along the west is famous for its unusually shaped basalt formations and caves. The best way to see the west coast is by a day boat trip, which I did and was the highlight of my trip. I swam 1k in 16C water around the rock formations and caves of KLEFTIKO – the best place to visit on the island. The other terrific spot is the CASTRO (Castle) on top of PLAKA hill at 455m, near the capital – you can see the entire island from this one spot – a photographer’s paradise. The roads to Plaka and in the east are very narrow and broken – best seen by scooter or small car. I hired a car so I could recover from my Sifnos scooter incident. I finally ran my first 10km on the morning of my departure – so glad to be back on the road…
Enjoy the island of Milos.
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