Justin Fox Publishes Excerpt on Africa’s Island Journeys

What changed

Justin Fox has published an excerpt from his travelogue about Africa’s islands and the journeys linking them. The passage follows Fox flying from Nampula Airport over Mozambique’s Quirimbas Archipelago with Dave LePoidevin, a missionary and mercy-flight pilot who had flown in Africa for more than a decade.

LePoidevin handed Fox the controls of a red-and-white Cessna 210, guided him around thunderclouds and later took over for a low flight near the islands. The wider book ranges from Madeira, St Helena and São Tomé to Robben Island, Ilha de Moçambique, Mauritius, Zanzibar and Seychelles.

Why it matters

The striking detail is not simply that Fox saw the Quirimbas from the air. It is that the view depended on a very particular kind of access: a working aircraft, a pilot used to difficult flying and a journey shaped by missionary flights, mercy work and dugong monitoring.

That makes the islands feel less like isolated postcard scenery and more like places connected by practical routes across sea and sky. Fox’s one-minute flying lesson is funny because the consequences are not. He can keep the horizon level, but the real pilot still handles the descent. The adventure works because experience remains in the cockpit.

The excerpt was published on 23 October 2026. It offers a vivid account of one flight, but says nothing about current aviation or tourism conditions, or about any conservation outcome.