Se7en Visit the Logos Hope…

You know how we love ships and shipping… The Logos Hope, is visiting Cape Town from 23 June until 12 July, it is the largest floating book Fair in the World. The goal of the Logos Hope is to bring Knowledge, Help and Hope to people all over the world. At the moment their crew of over four hundred folk, comprises of people from more than fifty countries of the world, all serving together and working together as a team. This is really a world tour, on a world tour.

When the team are in port they have a Book Fair, they do community outreach programs and also visit churches. They visited our church on Sunday and my gang were desperate to take a tour and see what life was like on board the ship. When one of the team contacted me and said, “I follow your blog, would you like to visit us,” I was literally blown away… I have said it before and I will say it again, “Blogging takes you to some quite incredible places.” Anyway, that’s exactly what we did… we visited and took a tour of this unique ship…

We chose a particularly cold and wintry day to visit and it was actually great to get out of the cold and meet our guide and her friend. Our guide is a full time mum, and is raising her two little ones on board ship. The ship has a school for the children of families that live on board. Families tend to live in the same corridors, in small apartment size quarters. Play space is at a premium, and my guys were quite appreciative of wide open spaces they have. The children lead a very interesting life, and their mums were filled with wisdom and anecdotes for my curious kids.

We immediately discovered how the teams stay in shape… it is a nine deck ship and to get anywhere you have to climb stairs and lots of them…

On a good day you would get a fantastic view of Table Mountain from here… on a wild wintry day… we got to see Table Mountain covered in a cloudy blanket.

Otherwise we learnt about drills and safety…

And the world of a deck hand… or a deckie as they are called.

Where there is a lot to see…

And a lot to be seen…

And someone, who doesn’t ever get to be in charge, had the opportunity to take control…

Neighbouring vessels remained in tact… and we managed to extricate ourselves from the Captain’s domain without incident…

A big concern for my kids was the food situation, isn’t it always (!!!), and feeding 400 people a day, everyday… puts our own thirty meals a day firmly in their place. We had a peak at the bakery,

And a look at the cafeteria,

And a glance at the menu… which received the stamp of approval from the gang. I have to say that I cannot begin to express how grateful I am that I don’t have to do the grocery shopping for this… I just can’t even begin to imagine it…

And this is the reason that most folk visit the ship… an enormous book store packed with books at really affordable prices. Thousands and thousands of books…

You will have to spend some time browsing…

There is a coffee shop and stories and entertainment to help you recover… and lots of super friendly volunteers ready to help you and tell you about life on board ship.

And some very happy book shoppers!!!

You can take a virtual tour of the ship here. And any questions about the ship and the task that they do you can read about here. And if that isn’t enough, these articles of celebrating 40 years of OM Ships are fascinating reads, especially this one, which includes dozens of recipes.

So if you are heading for the Waterfront over the next week or so, then pop down to the Logos Hope for a visit… a really interesting outing that will have any of your young potential world travelers very excited about their future.