Palau
Rock Islands Southern Lagoon
Hundreds of mushroom-shaped limestone islands floating on water so clear the shadows have shadows.
The water beneath your kayak is so transparent that your shadow falls not on the surface but on the sand below. Mushroom-shaped limestone islands rise in every direction, their bases gnawed into stems by the tide, their crowns dense with forest. Salt and warm stone hang in the air, and the only noise is your paddle breaking glass.
The Rock Islands Southern Lagoon is a 100,200-hectare UNESCO World Heritage property in Palau, scattered with 445 uninhabited limestone islands whose mushroom profiles were carved by seawater dissolving rock at the tideline. Hidden inside the islands lie 52 marine lakes, the most of any place on Earth, each a sealed body of seawater where life has evolved apart from the ocean a few metres away. The reefs between them hold more than 385 coral species, 746 fish species and the world's most isolated population of dugong. People lived here once: stonework villages, rock art and burial sites survive beneath the forest canopy, abandoned during the 1600s and 1700s. Koror State manages the lagoon by permit, and licensed boat and kayak operators thread visitors through the maze to sandbars, snorkelling reefs and sheltered coves.
Solo
A full-day kayak programme keeps you at water level for hours, sliding beneath arches and between limestone stems while a guide handles the permits and the route. The long, quiet passages between islands are where the lagoon does its work.
Couple
Ask your boat crew for a late-afternoon beach stop, when low light turns the undercut islands to silhouettes and the shallows to sheets of colour. Even a short stay on a permitted sandbar feels like the lagoon has been narrowed down to two people.
Family
Guides choose sheltered, shallow snorkel stops to match the day's sea state, where children can drift over coral heads and, on a good day, meet a Napoleon wrasse. The beach barbecue in the middle of the circuit does the rest.
Friends
A group day here strings paddling, snorkelling and a barbecue across a different cluster of islands each trip. Nobody has to plan anything harder than where to jump in first.
- UNESCO lists 445 uninhabited limestone islands across this 100,200-hectare lagoon, which holds 52 marine lakes, the highest concentration on Earth.
- Reefs within the property support more than 385 coral species, 746 fish species and the world's most isolated dugong population.
- Stonework villages, rock art and burial sites from some three millennia of settlement remain in the island forests, abandoned around three centuries ago.
- Koror State permits govern the lagoon, where kayaking, snorkelling and boat days range out to bioluminescent night paddles.
Full-day circuits grill a beach barbecue lunch mid-lagoon, eaten with sand underfoot between snorkel stops on the World Heritage route.
Back in Koror, order demok, Palau's national soup of green taro leaves and coconut milk, sometimes deepened with land crab.
Península Valdés
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Right whales breach in sheltered gulfs where orcas hunt sea lions in the surf.
Ilha Grande
Brazil
Ruins of a maximum-security prison dissolving into Atlantic Forest on a World Heritage island.
Bocas del Toro
Panama
Over-water bungalows on a Caribbean archipelago where sloths drift through mangrove canopies.
Attabad Lake
Pakistan
Turquoise water fills a valley that was dry land until a 2010 landslide dammed the river.
Jellyfish Lake
Palau
A lake where golden jellyfish chase the sun and stop dead at the shadow line.
Koror Lagoon Wrecks
Palau
A 1944 blitz sank dozens of Japanese ships whose cargo holds are now coral gardens.
Big Drop-off
Palau
Step off shin-deep reef into a vertical abyss that drops nine hundred feet into darkness.
Blue Corner
Palau
Hook into bare rock, hang in the current, and let the sharks come to you.