Lake Malawi National Park

Snorkelling at Cape Maclear reveals why biologists compare Lake Malawi to the Galapagos: clouds of cichlid fish in electric blues and golds, hundreds of species and nearly all of them found in no other water on Earth. The national park at the lake's southern end — among the first parks anywhere created chiefly to protect freshwater fish — takes in rocky shores, islands and clear waters where this evolutionary explosion continues. UNESCO inscribed it in 1984 as natural World Heritage.