Cape Maclear

Cape Maclear is a sand beach on the southern shore of Lake Malawi, at the village of Chembe inside Lake Malawi National Park. It is the register's first inland record, and the foundation document reserved the category precisely for cases like this.

The lake justifies it. Lake Malawi is five hundred and sixty kilometres long, up to seven hundred metres deep, and generates waves large enough that its beaches behave like a coast; the water is clear, warm and fresh. It holds more fish species than any other lake on earth — around a thousand cichlids, almost all of them endemic — and the park, inscribed by UNESCO in 1984, was the first in the world created to protect freshwater fish. Snorkelling here is genuinely worth it: the rocks off the beach are covered in mbuna, small brightly coloured cichlids, and they are unbothered by people.

The beach is golden sand shelving gently into clear water, with fish eagles overhead and dugout canoes drawn up along it. The one serious caveat is bilharzia — schistosomiasis is endemic in the lake, the risk is real, and it is treatable with a single course of praziquantel afterwards. Lodges vary in how honestly they discuss this and travellers should read health advice rather than reassurance.

Development is a village of several thousand people with lodges along the shore, and it is a working fishing community rather than a resort. The park boundary runs through it. Otter Point at the end of the peninsula is the best snorkelling, and the islands offshore — Domwe and Mumbo — have walk-in campsites and no power at all.

A freshwater beach with a reef's worth of fish on it. Snorkel the rocks, take the boat to Otter Point, and read the bilharzia advice rather than the lodge's reassurance — the risk is real and the treatment is one course of tablets weeks later, which is what everyone who lives here does.