March 20, 2023

The night before leaving Marrakech for Rabat, I received a message on my phone from the owner of the apartment that we had reserved for our last night in Morocco. The message said “Apartment is only for family and married couples with marriage papers.”

I was a bit confused at first. Then I realized he wanted to make sure we were married, as this is a traditional Muslim country, and they will not allow an unmarried couple to stay in a hotel room or apartment together.

So I responded: “Yes, thank you. it is just me and my wife. Our passports show that we are married (same surname).”

The response came immediately: “You told me you are two men. you are not family. I can’t accept you.”

Now I was really confused. “No. Perhaps you have me confused with someone else?”

Again, the response came quickly, this time with a photo attached of what appeared to be a “boudoir”-type photo of a man laying in what looked to be a bed of rose petals. “This is your photo.”

I would have been cracking up if I wasn’t so tired. Instead, I was getting irritated and about to tell the host to just forget it and we would get a place somewhere else.

There was a brief pause before the messages started flooding into my phone:
“Sorry”
“Sorry”
“Sorry”
“My mistake”
“I’m very very very sorry.”

I chuckled a bit and shook my head. there wasn’t much more I could do. This is a very Muslim country and their religion definitely discriminates again gay men. That much was out of my control.

We eventually smoothed things out and agreed to accept an apartment from him, with a bit of an upgraded parking situation (an underground locked parking garage, which always makes me feel better about leaving the bike).

When we finally did arrive and check into the apartment, the owner was again very apologetic and very nice. He suggested a couple of options for dinner that night, and we chose the seafood place a few blocks down the street.

When we arrived at the restaurant, there was no English menu, and the staff spoke no English. So I took out my phone, opened the Google Translate app, and used the camera to translate the menu. It worked like a charm. We found a seafood plate that included fish, shrimp, mussels, fried calamari rings, salad, and french fries, and was offered for two people or three people. I told the waiter we wanted the seafood plate for two.

When the food came, they brought two huge plates of seafood. It was enough to feed four people easily. I began to get nervous. I was convinced that when I told the waiter we wanted the seafood plate for two, he must have misunderstood me and took it to mean that we wanted TWO seafood plates for two people. The quantity of food was overwhelming.

This was just half of the amount of seafood they brought to the table.

The bigger problem though was that we had a money problem. This being our last night in Morocco, I had intentionally spent all of our Moroccon Dirham except just enough for dinner. And this place didn’t take credit cards. Worse yet, my ATM card had expired just before we left the US, and I failed to notice (and the bank didn’t automatically send me a new card). On top of that, I was carrying two credit cards: one which I had no PIN for, so I couldn’t get cash from an ATM with it, and the other one had been declined by the last several ATM machines.

I was having visions of washing a LOT of dishes tonight.

The food was great, but I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t been so worried about how I was going to pay for it. So when we finished and I asked for the check, nervously, I was shocked when the waiter brought the bill and it turned out that, yes, all of that food was truly just one order for two people. We had enough money to pay for dinner after all.

We didn’t spend any time in Rabat, the capitol of Morocco. It was just a stopping point on our way back to the ferry at Tanger Med. I don’t feel like we really missed anything. As I said earlier, we’re not really city people. I’m sure there are some nice mosques and historic sites in Rabat, and some nice beaches. But we’re not really beach people either. So we left Rabat early the next day to make sure we arrived in plenty of time to catch our ferry back to Spain.

Morocco had been a great experience. Overall, Morocco is the friendliest and most welcoming country I’ve visited thus far, and the places we went varied widely and were so different than anywhere in Europe we had been in the past year.

It’s interesting to me that so many Europeans that we’ve met talk about wanting to come to the US to see the desert in the Southwest, and those that have made the trip talk about how beautiful it is. So much of Morocco looks a lot like Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of Utah, and is so much closer to home. And as a motorcyclist, they can ride there with just a brief ferry trip. I would highly recommend Morocco as a great desert destination to European motorcyclists looking to save a ton of money and experience the beauty of true desert scenery.

And if that isn’t enough, then head for Utah.