Las Caletas, a day trip beach excursion offered from Vallarta Adventures, is a beautiful hideaway with lots to offer for the entire family.
Vallarta Adventures Tours
Vallarta Adventures is hands down the best tour group in Puerto Vallarta. They pretty much have PV on lock down and rightfully so. They’re great at what they do – deal with masses of foreigners looking to have a fun, safe time. When I visited Puerto Vallarta for the first time a couple of years ago, all my tours were automatically booked through Vallarta Adventures. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that this was still the case.
Las Caletas
Las Caletas, located a short catamaran ride away in Banderas Bay, is a secluded beach that serves as Vallarta Adventures’ own exclusive tropical beach hideaway. Once there, guests can scuba dive, snorkel, visit the jungle spa, relax on the beach or even take a cooking class. Upon arrival everyone is ushered into a beautiful open-air restaurant where for vegetarian mushroom tacos served in homemade tortillas.
Then you’re off to explore the hideaway at your leisure. It doesn’t show from my pictures but Las Caletas is extremely family friendly. It has an entire kids adventure park and a teen adventure cove. There’s zipline, ‘the blob’ and a huge water slide down into the water.
Cooking Class
Can you guess what I wanted to do? That’s right, it was the cooking class for me. I had one of my best days in Puerto Vallarta at Las Caletas. The Chef and the other cooking class participants made the day so wonderful. The Chef was kind enough to write out his homemade fish stock recipe; I included below along with the rest of the recipes from the class.
I’m calling him Chef because he is the one name that I don’t remember unfortunately. Seriously though, the paella we made came out delicious. I haven’t had the guts to try to make it remake the original recipe at home by myself yet.
Seafood Paella
PAELLA!! This was my first time making paella. It smelled so good while we were making it that I almost fainted haha. This was the inspiration for my Slow Cooker Chicken & Seafood Paella recipe! Here are some pics from the process:
After we let the paella set to cook, we hopped off to our spa treatment. It was magnificent. We climbed up what seemed like a million stairs into the jungle to a quaint lodge where we had massages in side-by-side rooms. Great atmosphere, great massage. The downside is that while we were getting rubbed down, the paella was being served. And then the rest of the lunch buffet was served as well. So unfortunately I don’t have a final pic of the paella. I missed that. But in the pic below, you can see some of the paella underneath the food. All the food served at the lunch buffet was delicious.
Side Dishes
In addition to the paella we also made guacamole and fish ceviche. Both were amazing of course. Mainly because the ingredients were so fresh. The cilantro, the onion, the avocados, the fish – everything tasted like it was delivered fresh that morning.
Recipes
Below are the original recipes from the cooking class. As you can see, nothing is re-written, these are the original documents. Including the hand-written fish stock recipe from Chef!
Relaxation in Paradise
Outside of the cooking class and spa treatments, the rest of the time we did what we do best – relax on the beach. It really did feel like we were in paradise.
Overall the 7 hours spent with Vallarta Adventures at Las Caletas were some the best during our 10 day stay in Puerto Vallarta.
On the way back, a couple of dolphins swam along side or boat for a few minutes. Perfect ending.
8 comments
wow they all look amazing! Cooking lessons can be so much fun especially in an exotic location and outdoors! The stock looks so rich and delicious!
I can’t believe we never made it there when we lived in California. So far away now…I guess we’ll have to stick to the east coast now!
Fun! The cooking class looks right up my alley! I love taking them all over the world. I haven’t been to one that offered paella, nice! I hope to visit Puerto Vallarta some day. They invited me on a press trip last year only to cut half of us from the list when it actually transpired. Thanks dudes. LOl
Viva Mexico!
What a fun itinerary — paradise and a cooking class all in one. The paella looks incredible. How did you fight off all the others on the beach once the aromas reached them?
I think you learn so much from a culture through its food, so I think it’s so cool to take cooking classes. Looks like you had a lot of fun and learned a lot. Love that picture of you sneaking a taste! lol
Wow looks like beautiful surroundings and INCREDIBLE food! Now I’m hungry 😉 Thanks for sharing!
I can’t get over how amazing that food looks. I want it all! Thank you for putting all of these amazing places on my radar.