I took a day off work a few weeks back, and decided to take our 3 year old to a safari park. Faced with a choice of what car to take I decided to take our nice 2010 black GTi out as my wife had left it at home and taken the train to work.
First point of interest was the lions who a couple decided to stand right in front of the car and then walk right past the window to the rear of the car. It was a good feeling to know that I had set the doors to automatically lock when driving off, also another handy feature on our 5 door is the ability to switch off the rear windows buttons from being opened just as there was a lion right outside looking at my 3 year old who wanted to open the window stroke it. They also loved the twin rear exhaust pipes as a couple of them decided to sit right behind the car (to get a warm I guess). I popped the car in reverse and had a cracking view from the rear view camera of a lion sniffing the camera.
After a drive around some other enclosures it was decision time, do I drive through the enclosure of 180 baboons or take the car friendly route. Curiosity got the better of me so off we drove in. Now on the road in you pass the cars leaving, which was a little worrying – a Picasso had several monkeys on the roof and I noticed the number plate had been ripped off the back. Next was another people carrier with its rear wiper assembly ripped out and was dangling off the back by pipes or wires. At that point I though hmm this might have been a bad idea. Next we went past the park’s white smashed up pick up truck covered in monkeys, and I couldn’t help noticing that the windows had metal grills covering the side windows. Anyway I carried on driving through the enclosure surrounded by baboons, they’re clever F*ckers, a mummy and baby stopped right in front of the car so I had to stop, at that point 3 of them decided to jump on the car including one large adult male baboon right on the bonet in front of the drives side. It was very easy to see it was a male baboon. There was two looking through the sunroof window and 2 on the back bumper hanging on the rear wiper. So off I drove off slowly. Next thing was my 3 year old daughter who was telling the baboons at the rear of the car to get off, just as one of them decided to try and eat the rear wiper. So we all happily drove along the road with the rear wiper getting eaten and a small pair of b0ll0cks blocking my view. Towards the end they all started to drop off apart from the one at the back of the car which seemed to be trying to hide and hanging on the rear wiper, I think he was trying to escape by handing on the back of the car, even a sharp blast of the throttle didn’t work however the rear screen wash did.
At the end of the park we pulled up and surveyed the car. VERY lucky! Just a few surface scuffs on the bonnet where the arse of the adult male was but that was it, even the rear wiper was ok. So that was it, off we drove home with me thinking thank god I didn’t trash my wife’s GTI. And to end with my conclusion, the Golf GTI’s build quality is sufficiently strong enough to throw any sort of b0ll0cks at it, even a baboon’s on the bonnet.
