Malawi

Malawi is defined by its lake, which takes up close to a fifth of the territory and fills much of the southern arm of the Great Rift Valley. It is an ancient, deep lake of clear water, with rocky shores, sandy beaches and muddy bottoms that have generated a diversity of fish unmatched in any other lake in the world. Out of the water, the country keeps the Nyika plateau, a rolling expanse of high-altitude grassland where antelopes graze and which fills with orchids in the wet season, and the Mulanje massif, a granite inselberg that rises in isolation above the plain and holds endemic flora. The parks of Liwonde and Majete, in the Shire valley, have in a few years brought back a fauna that had almost completely disappeared.