BOOK EXCERPT: Paradise found – A full-throttle view of Africa’s island treasures

In this adventure-filled travelogue, Justin Fox takes readers on a voyage of discovery from Atlantic isles such as Madeira, St Helena and São Tomé to southern islands such as Robben, Dassen and Ilha de Moçambique, and the Indian Ocean gems of Mauritius, Zanzibar and Seychelles.

Fox weaves geography, history and his own travels into a narrative rich with the smell of the sea, stories of pirates and the allure of tropical shores. Here is an excerpt.

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“Howdy, Justin, a damn fine day for flying,” said Dave LePoidevin as he stepped from his Land Rover one autumn morning outside my scruffy hotel. Wearing a cowboy hat, jeans and thick spectacles, Dave was a laconic, grey-bearded gent in his fifties.

Hailing from Minnesota, he’d come to Africa to fly for God and had been conducting missionary and mercy flights on behalf of Mission Aviation Fellowship for more than a decade. Vamizi Lodge had chartered Dave and his aircraft to show me around the Quirimbas Archipelago.

We drove to Nampula Airport where Dave unlocked a hangar and I lent a hand as we dragged open the big roller doors to reveal a pair of red-and-white Cessna 210s. Then he unfolded a map and I pointed out all the islands I wanted to shoot.

While Dave ambled over to the control tower to submit a flight plan, I loaded our bags into the plane. He returned with a rasp to file away nicks in the propeller, explaining that a friend had borrowed the aircraft and taxied down a gravel strip with the revs too high, leaving nasty gouges in the blades.

Once the Cessna was shipshape, Dave and I pushed it out to the apron, climbed aboard and, checking with traffic control, were ­given clearance for take-off. A few minutes later, we were climbing into a bright blue sky, the terrain below dotted with granite inselbergs that looked like outsize elephants.

“I’ve got a ton of paperwork to do,” said Dave into the microphone. “Can you fly a plane?”

“Er, no, afraid not.”

“Oh, it’s easy,” he said, dismissing his 30 years of experience and giving me a comprehensive one-minute lesson. I took the controls, easing them back and forth, feeling how the aircraft reacted.

“There, you’re doing just great,” he said. “Take us up to 7,500 feet, then level off and keep to the heading on the GPS. It’s a piece of cake.”

“Sure, no problem,” I said, incredulously.

But it wasn’t, actually, that hard – the flying bit, not the landing and taking off bit, which I assumed would require at least another one-minute lesson. I kept the horizon level and made very slow and gradual adjustments, repeating Dave’s instructions in my head: compensate for drift, watch the altimeter, don’t porpoise. It wasn’t unlike steering a yacht.

Towers of dark cloud loomed ahead. “Are those a problem?” I asked.

Dave glanced up from his file. “Hell yes, try to find a path between the uglier ones.”

“I–”

“You’ll be fine.”

Nervously, I banked the Cessna this way and that between mountains of soiled cotton wool. Gradually, I got the hang of things and, somehow, a path always opened up between the thunderheads. After an hour and a half, we passed Pemba Bay and began a slow descent. The real pilot took over.

“How low do you want to go for your photography?” he asked.

“Very low and very slow, please, Dave.”

“Seaweed-in-the-wheels low?”

“Just a bit higher.”

“Oh.” He sounded disappointed.

Dave had recently been involved in dugong monitoring with a group of scientists and had spent days flying among the islands at palm-tree height. I’d been told that Dave “knew what he was doing”, which was reassuring, given the kind of flying I was to experience over the coming days.

Reaching Ponta do Diablo (Point of the Devil), I spotted a small islet. “There, Dave, that’s Quipaco – the first of the Quirimbas! Let’s take a look.”

What followed was the heady mix of exhilaration and terror Japanese dive-bomber pilots must have felt when attacking Pearl Harbor. Our Cessna banked hard and tipped into a steep dive: Quipaco was in our sights, a sitting duck. I was half expecting to see puffs of flak as Dave reached for the bomb lever, or was it the throttle, as we levelled off and skated over the island, almost brushing the trees. I hadn’t taken a single shot.

“Not interested in photographing that one?” asked Dave.

“No, I mean yes. Er, could we go round again? A bit slower, please, and maybe less strafing this time.”

“No probs,” said Dave, banking round and pulling enough Gs to dislodge my breakfast.

We circled Quipaco, a nondescript deserted isle set in the mouth of a wide bay – a crumb fallen from the mainland table. I took a few shots before we broke off and headed north. Over to port lay the mainland section of Quirimbas National Park, a maze of waterways and mangrove swamps with the occasional hamlet surrounded by cultivated shambas, but mostly the land was wild and empty. DM

Treasured Islands by Justin Fox was published by Umuzi (Penguin Random House) in October 2026. It is available for a retail price of R380.

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R39. The e-edition of Daily Maverick’s weekly newspaper, DM168, is now free for readers who are signed into their Daily Maverick account. Click on the cover of the newspaper below to access the e-edition.