The Most Beautiful Water Wonders in Africa

34 places in 22 countries · updated 13 October 2026

1. 01 Victoria Falls

   Zambia · 2 km from Victoria Falls17.925° S 25.858° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage
   • UNESCO natural beauty

   

   What makes the falls unusual is the geometry. The river does not tumble down a valley. It falls into a transverse chasm, the First Gorge, and leaves through a single gap roughly 110 metres wide. From there it zigzags through a chain of gorges that mark older positions of the falls, each cut back along a line of weakness in the lava.

   Did you know? Livingstone recorded older local names, Seongo and Chongwe, which mean the place of the rainbow.

   More about Victoria Falls →

2. 02 Lake Nakuru

   Kenya · 9.7 km from Nakuru0.367° S 36.083° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage
   • UNESCO natural beauty

   

   That chemistry has changed, and it's worth knowing before setting expectations for a visit. Since around 2013, and especially from 2020 onward, Lake Nakuru's water level has risen dramatically — its surface area roughly doubled over a decade — diluting the alkaline water that the algae need to bloom.

   Did you know? In 2009 the fenced sanctuary held more than 25 eastern black rhinos, one of Kenya's largest concentrations, plus about 70 southern white rhinos.

   More about Lake Nakuru →

3. 03 Siwa Oasis

   Egypt · 0.6 km from Siwa Oasis29.205° N 25.519° E

   

   At the centre of the town stands the ruin of Shali, the old fortified settlement built on a rock outcrop out of kershef, a building material of salt and mud, with palm logs for beams. For centuries it was a warren of houses and alleys climbing five storeys above the surrounding town, until three days of heavy rain in 1926 began dissolving its walls and its people moved out.

   Did you know? The first European known to visit since Roman times was the English traveller William George Browne, who came in 1792 to find the oracle temple.

   More about Siwa Oasis →

4. 04 Augrabies Falls

   South Africa28.591° S 20.341° E

   

   Below the falls the river has carved a gorge some 18 km long and around 240 metres deep, its walls polished smooth and pale by water. Figures of 146 metres sometimes quoted for the falls in fact describe the height of these canyon walls. In flood the volume is immense: peak flows of about 7,800 cubic metres per second were recorded in 1988 and 6,800 in 2006, more than Niagara's highest recorded flow.

   Did you know? According to legend, the Grootslang guarding that pool lies coiled around a hoard of gold and gems that it will protect for eternity.

   More about Augrabies Falls →

5. 05 Lake Assal

   Djibouti11.650° N 42.417° E

   

   The lake is a product of the Afar Triangle, where the African and Arabian plates are pulling apart and the Great Rift Valley meets the sea. 4 and 1 million years old. Lake Assal has no river feeding it; instead, sea water from the Ghoubbet-el-Kharab, an inlet of the Gulf of Tadjoura some 10 km to the south-east, seeps through the fractured rock and rises in hot springs at a rate estimated at 5,000 to 8,000 litres per second.

   Did you know? That eruption poured out about 12 million cubic metres of fluid basalt lava, with flows running across the rift floor towards Lake Assal.

   More about Lake Assal →

6. 06 Aldabra

   Seychelles9.416° S 46.416° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage
   • UNESCO natural beauty

   

   It is best known as the kingdom of the giant tortoise. Around 100,000 Aldabra giant tortoises live on the atoll, the largest population in the world, some weighing up to 350 kg. Their survival is a near miracle: in the 19th century ships carried them off by the hundred for food, and by 1900 they were close to extinction.

   Did you know? Around 273 species of flowering plants and ferns grow on the atoll, along with roughly a thousand insect species and three endemic bats.

   More about Aldabra →

7. 07 Tugela Falls

   South Africa28.752° S 28.894° E

   

   The catch is that height and volume don't travel together here. Tugela isn't fed by a glacier or a major river system — it's the very source of the Tugela River, starting as runoff off the Mont-aux-Sources plateau at nearly 3,200 metres — so in the dry Drakensberg winter (June–August) the flow can thin to almost nothing, leaving the famous drop looking more like a wet streak on the rock than a waterfall.

   Did you know? Rivers rising on the same plateau flow to two oceans: the Tugela east to the Indian Ocean, others via the Orange River west to the Atlantic.

   More about Tugela Falls →

8. 08 Anse Source d'Argent

   Anse Source d'argent

   Seychelles4.372° S 55.827° E

   

   The water in front of it changes colour with the tide and the angle of the light, and late in the day the granite catches the low sun and warms in tone against the turquoise. Walking from one end to the other means wading around boulders and slipping through narrow gaps between them, and the most striking corners appear only when you reach them.

   Did you know? L'Union Estate covers about 300 hectares, and until the 1980s its coconuts were still crushed for copra in ox-driven mills.

   More about Anse Source d'Argent →

9. 09 Lake Retba

   Charlie kirk is my idol

   Senegal · 29.2 km from Dakar14.839° N 17.234° W

   

   The water's salinity — over 40% in places — rivals the Dead Sea, and it's buoyant enough that people float in it the same way. That same salinity supports a working industry: roughly 3,000 salt harvesters, coated in shea butter for hours of protection against the corrosive brine, wade or boat out to break up the crusted salt bed with long poles and haul it ashore by hand.

   Did you know? In the dry season its salinity can reach around 350 grams of salt per litre of water.

   More about Lake Retba →

10. 10 Chott el Djerid

    Tunisia · 38 km from Tozeur33.700° N 8.433° E

    

    What makes it extraordinary is colour and light. The crust is not simply white: depending on minerals, algae and water, patches turn pale green and purple, and after rare rain a thin film of water turns stretches of the plain into a mirror. The heat haze over the flats produces mirages — floating islands and false lakes — and fata morganas are a regular sight. At the edges salt is collected in crusted mounds.

    Did you know? Jules Verne's novel Invasion of the Sea is built around the scheme to flood the Saharan chotts.

    More about Chott el Djerid →

11. 11 Murchison Falls

    Uganda · 31.2 km from Pakwach2.278° N 31.686° E

    

    The falls take their name from Roderick Murchison, president of the Royal Geographical Society, chosen by Samuel and Florence Baker, the first Europeans on record to see them in the 1860s. In the 1970s, under Idi Amin, they were called Kabalega Falls after Kabalega, the nineteenth-century king of Bunyoro; the renaming was never made law, and the older name returned after Amin fell.

    Did you know? The river below the falls supports Uganda's largest population of Nile crocodiles, and the surrounding park has recorded around 450 bird species.

    More about Murchison Falls →

12. 12 Makgadikgadi Pans

    Botswana20.717° S 24.951° E

    

    The pans are the floor of a vanished sea. Lake Makgadikgadi once covered an area larger than Switzerland before it dried out tens of thousands of years ago, leaving Sua (Sowa) Pan, Ntwetwe Pan and the smaller Nxai Pan as its residue; the largest single pan is close to 5,000 square kilometres on its own, and Sua sits at about 890 metres, the lowest point of the basin.

    Did you know? Some genetic studies have proposed this region as one of the possible homelands of anatomically modern humans, roughly 200,000 years ago.

    More about Makgadikgadi Pans →

13. 13 Ouzoud Falls

    Morocco32.015° N 6.719° W

    

    The name is Berber and refers to grinding grain, a reminder that the falls were a working landscape long before they were a view. Small water-driven mills were built into the rock along the stream and used for wheat and olives, and the slopes around the gorge are planted with olive groves that feed the village of Tanaghmeilt at the top of the falls. The mix of terraced trees, red sandstone and white water is what makes the place so photogenic.

    Did you know? About a dozen small traditional mills still work at the top of the falls, keeping alive the grain-grinding that gave the place its name.

    More about Ouzoud Falls →

14. 14 Blue Nile Falls

    Ethiopia · 25.4 km from Bahir Dar11.491° N 37.588° E

    

    The falls lie on the upper course of the river, about 30 km downstream of Bahir Dar, in the Amhara Region of the Ethiopian Highlands. The flow is now partly regulated: a weir controls the outlet of Lake Tana, and since 2003 a hydroelectric station has diverted much of the water outside the rainy season, which is when the falls appear at their fullest.

    Did you know? Those Lake Tana barbs form one of only two known species flocks of carp-family fish in the world; the other, in the Philippines, has been decimated.

    More about Blue Nile Falls →

15. 15 Blue Hole

    Egypt28.572° N 34.537° E

    

    For most divers the Blue Hole is a straightforward dive. The standard route begins further along the shore at the entry known as the Bells and follows the wall to finish across the Saddle at about 7 metres; recreational divers on this route do not see the Arch. The site's reputation comes from the Arch.

    Did you know? Dozens of memorial plaques, left by families and friends, are fixed to the rocks on the shore beside the entry point, naming divers lost in the hole.

    More about Blue Hole →

16. 16 Lake Natron

    Tanzania2.417° S 36.000° E

    

    The blood-red color is not pollution or dye; it's biology thriving in exactly the conditions that should kill it. Salt-loving cyanobacteria and other halophilic microorganisms multiply in the alkaline brine and produce red pigments as a byproduct of their own survival — the same basic principle behind Lake Hillier's pink, just a different organism dominating a different chemical extreme.

    Did you know? Most of its water arrives via the Southern Ewaso Ng'iro River, which rises in central Kenya, topped up by mineral-rich hot springs.

    More about Lake Natron →

17. 17 Kilwa Kisiwani

    Tanzania8.982° S 39.517° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The surviving buildings are made of coral stone and lime. The Great Mosque was begun in the 12th century and greatly enlarged in the early 14th under Sultan al-Hasan ibn Sulaiman, when its prayer hall was covered with a forest of domes and vaults on slender columns.

    Did you know? The oldest prayer hall of the Great Mosque had a flat roof carried on nine hexagonal columns each cut from a single tree trunk, unusual for mosques of the region.

    More about Kilwa Kisiwani →

18. 18 Maletsunyane Falls

    Lesotho29.869° S 28.052° E

    

    The plunge pool throws back a deep, booming echo. Local tradition explains the sound as the wailing of people who drowned in the falls, and the noise carries well beyond the rim. The spray gave the nearest settlement its name: Semonkong means "place of smoke". The town was founded in the early 1880s as a refuge for Basotho families driven from their homes during the Basuto Gun War against the forces of the Cape Colony.

    Did you know? The Maletsunyane River feeds the Orange River, so water plunging here ends its journey in the Atlantic Ocean.

    More about Maletsunyane Falls →

19. 19 Boulders Beach

    South Africa · 31 km from Cape Town34.197° S 18.451° E

    

    The colony is young. In 1982 just two breeding pairs settled here; within a few decades the population had grown to around three thousand birds, helped in part by restrictions on commercial trawling in False Bay that left more sardines and anchovies for them to feed on.

    Did you know? Each adult has bare pink patches of skin above the eyes, and stands only about 60 to 70 centimetres tall.

    More about Boulders Beach →

20. 20 Guelta d'Archei

    Chad16.904° N 21.774° E

    

    The camels are the daily rhythm of the place. Herders drive their animals down into the canyon to drink and rest, and over the centuries the dung of countless camels has stained the water dark. Yet the guelta also shelters something far older: a tiny relict population of West African crocodiles, Crocodylus suchus, one of the last surviving groups in the Sahara.

    Did you know? Climate records from Ennedi show rainfall falling from around 250 mm a year some 6,000 years ago to roughly 50 mm by about 2,700 years ago.

    More about Guelta d'Archei →

21. 21 Bazaruto Island

    Bazaruto

    Mozambique21.655° S 35.472° E

    

    The core of the island formed during the Pleistocene, and its older dunes are now an orange-red colour, while younger, pale Holocene dunes line the shore. During the last glacial maximum, when the sea stood about 130 metres lower, Bazaruto stood far higher above the water than it does today; the old shorelines are now marked by coral-covered rock formations offshore.

    Did you know? The tide here rises and falls by about 3 metres, exposing broad mudflats around the northern sand spit.

    More about Bazaruto Island →

22. 22 Sandwich Harbour

    Namibia23.367° S 14.483° E

    

    Behind the beach lies a shallow bay and, at its southern end, a brackish lagoon fringed with reed beds, an improbable strip of green in the middle of the desert, which draws great numbers of birds: flamingos, pelicans and flocks of migrant waders that feed on the mudflats. Its value as a wetland was recognised in 1995, when it became a Ramsar Site, and it lies inside the Namib-Naukluft National Park.

    Did you know? It is one of the most changeable stretches of the Namib coast: in the late 1800s the Atlantic broke through the sand barrier and flooded the lagoon.

    More about Sandwich Harbour →

23. 23 Lakes of Ounianga

    Lacs d'Ounianga

    Chad18.983° N 20.667° E

    • UNESCO natural beauty

    

    The lakes fall into two main groups, Ounianga Kebir and Ounianga Serir, with their colours depending on chemistry and the algae living in them, ranging from deep blue and green to reddish tones. At Ounianga Kebir the water is strongly saline. 5 square kilometres and loses a column of water about six metres deep to evaporation each year; only algae and microorganisms survive in its brine, yet the aquifer keeps it full.

    Did you know? With at least six fish species, the Ounianga Serir lakes are considered to hold the richest fish fauna known anywhere in the Sahara.

    More about Lakes of Ounianga →

24. 24 Gaberoun

    Libya26.803° N 13.535° E

    

    The lake belongs to a cluster of more than twenty basins scattered through the dunes of the Idehan Ubari in Fezzan, fed by groundwater and concentrated by relentless evaporation until the water is several times saltier than the sea. Swimming is possible. The brine is far from empty, though: it teems with tiny brine shrimp, and that small creature shaped the human story of the oasis.

    Did you know? In Fezzan the dried brine shrimp cakes were long valued as an aphrodisiac as well as a food.

    More about Gaberoun →

25. 25 Portuguese cistern

    Morocco · 0.8 km from El Jadida33.257° N 8.503° W

    

    The Portuguese first built a fort here in 1514. When it was enlarged into a full walled fortress in 1541, a chamber under the original citadel, whose earlier purpose is uncertain (it may have served as an armoury, barracks or granary), was converted to store water in case of siege. The design is credited to the architect Miguel de Arruda, with the building work entrusted to João de Castilho.

    Did you know? The emptied town was nicknamed al-Mahdouma, the ruined one, and was renamed al-Jadida, the new one, in 1820.

    More about Portuguese cistern →

26. 26 Chebika

    Tunisia34.317° N 7.933° E

    

    Above the gorge stands the old village, built from stone and earth on the slope of Jebel en Negueb. It was abandoned in 1969, when catastrophic floods struck the region, and its residents moved to a new village nearby; the empty houses and lanes, now weathered to the colour of the mountain, survive as a ruin overlooking the palms.

    Did you know? The palm grove covers only about 25 hectares shared by some 116 farmers, the smallest of the three great mountain oases near the Algerian border.

    More about Chebika →

27. 27 Hammam Meskhoutine

    Algeria · 14.2 km from Guelma36.460° N 7.269° E

    

    The colours come from the water's load of calcium carbonate and iron, which precipitate out as it flows over the slope. The complex is fed by about ten separate hot springs with a combined output of roughly 1,650 litres per second, hot enough in the outflow channels to cook an egg.

    Did you know? In 1883 a settler from Lorraine named Jean Sadeler is credited with discovering an underground lake at the site.

    More about Hammam Meskhoutine →

28. 28 Hole-in-the-Wall, Eastern Cape

    South Africa32.041° S 29.109° E

    

    The isiXhosa name, esiKhaleni, is usually translated as "the place of sound" or "place of thunder". In heavy swell the waves surge through the arch and boom against the rock, and the noise carries a long way along the shore.

    Did you know? The Oceanos rolled over and sank bow first about 45 minutes after the last person was lifted off, and its final minutes were filmed.

    More about Hole-in-the-Wall, Eastern Cape →

29. 29 Lake Abbe

    Ethiopia11.167° N 41.783° E

    

    The setting explains the strangeness. Lake Abbe sits at the Afar triple junction, the point where three pieces of the Earth's crust are slowly pulling away from one another. Hot geothermal fluid rising from below mixes with the lake water, and the carbonate it deposits has built the chimneys over time.

    Did you know? Many of the chimneys have a layered internal structure resembling stromatolites, built up band by band around the vents.

    More about Lake Abbe →

30. 30 Nosy Iranja

    Madagascar13.592° S 47.817° E

    

    The island's other name, Turtle Island, explains its second claim. Nosy Iranja is one of the most important nesting beaches in Madagascar for green turtles, which come ashore mostly at night between about May and October, while hawksbill turtles nest here mainly between October and February.

    Did you know? Turtle monitoring here grew out of cooperation between a hotel and researchers, and tourism on the south beaches helped curb poaching.

    More about Nosy Iranja →