For as lit­tle as TT $3.75, you can walk down the gang­way of the MV Lo­gos Hope with one of 5,000 books in hand.

The world’s largest float­ing book store is back in town af­ter a three-year ab­sence.

Trinidad and To­ba­go is the first stop on the 2020 des­ti­na­tion ros­ter for the MV Lo­gos Hope, which is owned by Chris­t­ian char­i­ty, GBA Ships.

The Ger­man com­pa­ny’s name is an acronym for ‘Good Books for All.’

The ship docked at the Cruise Ship Com­plex in Port-of-Spain on Tues­day and opened its doors to the pub­lic yes­ter­day.

Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes cut the rib­bon for the open­ing of the book­store and browsed some of the ti­tles avail­able for sale.

The in­ven­to­ry in­cludes chil­dren’s books, young adult fic­tion, adult non-fic­tion, home im­prove­ment guides, health and well­ness books, adult colour­ing books, cook­ing and bak­ing books, cross­word col­lec­tions, text­books and ba­by keep­sake al­bums.

The store al­so sells a va­ri­ety of de­vo­tion­al books as part of the crew’s com­mit­ment to their shared Chris­t­ian faith.

Books cost be­tween TT $3.75 and TT $150 thanks to spe­cial arrange­ments with pub­lish­ers which al­low the ship to of­fer sig­nif­i­cant­ly dis­count­ed prices.

Over 400 vol­un­teer crew mem­bers from more than 60 coun­tries work on the ship and come ashore at each des­ti­na­tion for char­i­ta­ble projects.

“Nor­mal­ly, in each port, we have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to go to jails, we have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to go to schools, dif­fer­ent church­es, help­ing with wa­ter fil­ters in the dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties of the city,” ex­plained Nico­las Suarez, the me­dia re­la­tions co­or­di­na­tor who is from Colom­bia. “That way, we leave a seed in this place, not on­ly this place but all the ports that we vis­it day by day.”

To­ba­go na­tive, Hae­lyn Bu­ur­ma, be­gan liv­ing on the ship last year when her Dutch hus­band be­came the chief en­gi­neer. They brought their two chil­dren, ages 7 and 9, on their glo­be­trot­ting ad­ven­ture. This is the first time she has re­turned to her home­land since mov­ing to the Nether­lands al­most two decades ago.

“I’m go­ing home to mom’s house and sleep­ing in her bed!” she laughed as she day­dreamed about her vis­it to To­ba­go.

The on-board ex­pe­ri­ence in­cludes an in­ter­na­tion­al cafe and cul­tur­al per­for­mances at sched­uled times. The crew will al­so per­form ‘The Li­on, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ at 2:30 pm and 6:30 pm every Sun­day dur­ing their stay.

The en­trance fee is TT $5. Chil­dren un­der 12 and adults over 65 can go aboard free of charge.

The ves­sel is in town un­til Jan­u­ary 26, but the ship will be closed on Mon­days to give crew mem­bers a day off.