By Bob Morgan, Jr.

This column is yet another travelogue involving my current excursion with young Robert to Morocco. Most of it is written aboard the evening train from Fez back to Marrakesh, an eight hour journey.

While the trip itself has been quite enjoyable, I must start out with the biggest negative of the trip - the effects on my middle aged body of riding a camel.

As I mentioned in the last column, the lad and I were planning a desert excursion. It proved to be a bit more than I expected. After a six hour minibus ride over the High Atlas mountains and then through the outskirts of the Sahara, we ended upat a place called Zagora. At Zagora, each of the seven of us on the tour got on a camel for the 2 1/2 hour trek to a campgrounds in the desert. Our two guides, both Berbers from the surrounding region, served us a traditional meal of Moroccan tagine, and even improvised a show of traditional music. When it was time to turn in, the tent lodging actually proved pretty good, with numerous blankets sheltering us from the cold night.

Unfortunately, however, the return trip from the campground, also a 2 1/2 hour journey, proved to be my undoing. While I was a little sore from the trip to the campgrounds, somehow my thigh muscles completely locked up on the way back. By the time I got off the beast at Zagora, I could barely walk and I have been hobbling ever since, with only a very slight improvement in the last 24 hours.

Yes, I see the humor (and believe me, so does Robert) of getting injured by a placid creature that rarely goes faster than five miles an hour, but my thigh still hurts.

Nevertheless, despite the camel follies, the trip continues to be an eye opener. For example, the huge market at Fez in many ways is unchanged from hundreds of years ago, with live animals for sale, numerous crafts being performed by hand (in particular, rug weaving) and an active tannery operation, employing five hundred workers and producing very pungent odors. (The lad persuaded me to get him a leather jacket at the tannery, which required extended haggling.)

But I think the trip has been instructive in another, perhaps more subtle, way. Sometimes people in the United States, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks but also after the many accounts of sectarian violence in Iraq, wonder whether there is a moderate Islamic and Arab "street" and whether Islam is in fact, to use President Bush's words, a "religion of peace."

At least in Morocco, a country that is 99 percent Muslim, there is such a moderate street. As I mentioned in the last column, Western practices such as the consumption of alcohol are tolerated in the country, even while forbidden by the tenets of Islam, a welcome example of open-mindedness. Moreover, strangers are treated well. We have been uniformly greeted warmly and dealt with fairly. While bargaining for goods may be hard, the agreed upon price is fully respected and negotiations end amicably.

In any event, my sore thigh will very likely heal in the near future, hopefully without medical intervention, but with it if necessary. But the memories and lessons of the Morocco trip will linger for a very long time.