diff --git a/pkg/provisioner/templates/kubernetes.go b/pkg/provisioner/templates/kubernetes.go
index 55a5bd78..69c8981f 100644
--- a/pkg/provisioner/templates/kubernetes.go
+++ b/pkg/provisioner/templates/kubernetes.go
@@ -95,8 +95,10 @@ export KUBECONFIG="${HOME}/.kube/config"
 
 # Install Calico
 # based on https://docs.tigera.io/calico/latest/getting-started/kubernetes/quickstart
-with_retry 3 10s kubectl --kubeconfig $KUBECONFIG create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/projectcalico/calico/${CALICO_VERSION}/manifests/tigera-operator.yaml
-with_retry 3 10s kubectl --kubeconfig $KUBECONFIG create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/projectcalico/calico/${CALICO_VERSION}/manifests/custom-resources.yaml
+with_retry 3 10s kubectl --kubeconfig $KUBECONFIG apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/projectcalico/calico/${CALICO_VERSION}/manifests/tigera-operator.yaml
+# Calico CRDs created. Now we sleep for 10s to ensure they are fully registered in the K8s etcd
+sleep 10s
+with_retry 3 10s kubectl --kubeconfig $KUBECONFIG apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/projectcalico/calico/${CALICO_VERSION}/manifests/custom-resources.yaml
 # Make single-node cluster schedulable
 kubectl taint nodes --all node-role.kubernetes.io/control-plane:NoSchedule-
 kubectl label node --all node-role.kubernetes.io/worker=