Malawi

Cape Maclear is a forested headland on the southwestern shore of Lake Malawi where the lake's clearest water meets rocky offshore reefs, creating one of the world's most accessible freshwater snorkelling sites among wild cichlid fish.

Lake Malawi holds roughly nine percent of the world's surface freshwater and hosts more cichlid fish species than any lake on earth, making it a destination of global biological importance framed by sandy beaches and forested hills.

Likoma Island is a mid-lake island of exposed granite rising from Lake Malawi's clear waters, dominated by the soaring St Michael's Cathedral and surrounded by snorkelling reefs of exceptional clarity and cichlid density.

Lilongwe is Malawi's political capital and largest city, a spread-out low-density urban landscape of government ministries, diplomatic compounds and informal markets, where the old town around the boma (government hill) sits uneasily alongside the rapid expansion of a rapidly growing African capital.

Liwonde National Park is Malawi's premier wildlife destination, centred on the Shire River and its floodplain where elephant herds, hippos and crocodiles concentrate, and where African Parks' rewilding programme has reintroduced cheetah and black rhino.

The Zomba Plateau rises abruptly from the Shire Highlands as a block of ancient basement rock crowned by a chain of natural lakes, pine plantations and montane grassland, offering one of Malawi's most dramatic changes in landscape within a short distance.