Published on 12/1/2007

It all started early in 1984, just after I'd moved in to my new lab/games room extension. I'd decided to have a mural done all down one wall of lots of llamas. The artist who came to do the painting brought lots of source material featuring my favourite beasts, and in one magazine was an article about someone who'd been to Peru, the very centre of camelid territory, for a holiday.

As any follower of my game style will doubtless know, I have long been a fan of llamas and Peruvian stuff in general. It had often seemed to me to be a good idea to actually go there, but I did not think that many people ran tours there. There could not be very many llama freaks in England wanting to go...

Inca Kola

What do programmers do on their holidays? We decided to ask the man who launched a thousand camels and other assorted furry creatures, JEFF MINTER. Read on for a really cosmic experience.
It all started early in 1984, just after I'd moved in to my new lab/games room extension. I'd decided to have a mural done all down one wall of lots of llamas. The artist who came to do the painting brought lots of source material featuring my favourite beasts, and in one magazine was an article about someone who'd been to Peru, the very centre of camelid territory, for a holiday. As any follower of my game style will doubtless know, I have long been a fan of llamas and Peruvian stuff in general. It had often seemed to me to be a good idea to actually go there, but I didn't think that many people ran tours there. There couldn't be very many llama freaks in England wanting to go... Luckily for me there are a small number of firms specialising in unusual trips abroad, and it was with one such firm that I booked a 15-day tour of Peru. There are only two or three trips per year and the one I picked coincided with the PCW Show. So in due course I shouldered my bag and left Olympia headed for the tube, Heathrow and subsequently Peru.
Jorge Chávez International Airport - Lima, Peru.	The flight was gruelling, to say the least. From London (where I had a final few games of Galaga at the airport, needing a final fix of video games before departing for unknown territory) we went to Madrid where we waited three hours in the airport. Finally boarding the Iberia jet at 2.00 in the morning, there followed an exhausting 18-hour flight with stops at Puerto Rico, Bogota, Ecuador and finally Lima. After such an ordeal you never, EVER want to see another plastic tray of airline food as long as you live! We staggered off the plane but I cheered up as we queued for Immigration, because over Passport Control was the symbol of the Peruvian national tourist board - a vicuna (like a llama but smaller and more delicate). After stashing the bags at the hotel I set off for a wander around the capital city of Peru. A short distance up the road was the Bing Bang Arcade, a fairly dingy but adequately stocked place (Defender, Sega Turbo, Scramble, Time Pilot, plus a few others).
There were masses of shops selling model llamas, llama rugs; jumpers, hats, scarves, even gold and silver llama jewellery, pottery llamas, llama belts, even llama matches! In the main square is the cathedral (very ornate) and some of the main Government buildings, patrolled by guards toting sub-machine guns, and also a water cannon (which they didn't like my taking photos of). Whilst in Lima we toured some of the more interesting museums, including the famous gold museum which contains an immense private collection of Inca gold (yes, there WERE gold llamas there ...) and tried some of the Peruvian food. After a couple of days in the capital, we left to tour some of the other parts of Peru. First on the agenda was Arequipa, the second largest city and situated in a beautiful setting beneath a conical volcano (like Mount Fuji, the one you see in the background of Pole Position).	Museo Oro del Peru (Gold Museum) - Lima, Peru.
After Lima which was interesting but a little dingy, Arequipa was very refreshing. The mountain air (this was about 8000 feet) was clear and the sun warm and bright. We explored the city on foot (the best way, I might add, to explore any city) and it was here that I first drank Inca Kola! This amazing drink is as big as Coke out there - they have huge adverts all over the place and even on the radio. Mind you, it is nothing at all like Coke - it's yellow for a start and tastes like ice cream soda but a bit tangier. It's ace! I drank gallons of the stuff out there and sorely miss it now!
Arequipa City - Southern Peru.
Close to Arequipa is the Colca Valley, an amazing place little known outside Peru. Within the Valley are villages which are being visited for the first time now after 400 years without any outside contact. The Valley itself is the deepest ravine on Earth, being twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in Cruise-Missile-Land... ! After Arequipa we proceeded to Puno, located on the shore of Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world at around 13,000 feet. At this height we all learned the "high altitude shamble", a slow, lazy walk you have to adopt if you're going to explore: there's only two-thirds as much oxygen in the air as there is at sea level and too much exertion is very tiring. Many of our tour group developed headaches and sickness and some had to be given oxygen (available free on demand in all the hotels!), but I was OK, probably because I'd been doing regular running for a few months before the trip to prepare for the high altitude.	Colca Valley and Canyon, Peru.
Here we visited the descendants of the Uros Indians. These people actually live on Lake Titicaca, on incredible floating islands made of reeds. We visited an entire village floating on such an island, which was weird. The ground undulates under your feet, and one fat German actually put his leg right through the island into the foul-smelling ooze beneath (yak yak!). There was even a floating school on the island ... can't be many of THOSE in the world!
Lake Titicaca and Island - Peru.

Machu Picchu

Also in Arequipa I encountered a flock of alpacas (like sheep built on a llama framework) which lived around our hotel. Most of them were friendly (as were nearly all the llamas and alpacas with which I came to grips in Peru) but there was one alpaca with only one eye who distinguished himself by the ability to spit with unerring accuracy from any angle. Approach him from behind and he'd swivel his head 180° and ZAP! The locals turned up one day and were vastly amused as One-Eye scored hits on some of the old dears who'd come out to take photos ... but I really freaked them out (and One-Eye too, I expect) when I became the first "gringo" they'd ever seen actually SPIT BACK at an alpaca!
Sacsayhuaman - Cusco, Peru.	After a few days in Puno we took the train to Cusco, the old capital of the Inca Empire. The train journey took about eight hours, passing through spectacular Andean scenery, and I spotted vast herds of llamas from the train windows. Above Cusco we visited the vast Inca fortifications of Sacsayhuaman, where vast stone blocks which look like they've been cut with precision lasers are formed into enormous walls. The joints between the stones are so good that even today you can't get a knife into some of the cracks. We took a trip out to the ruins at Ollantaytambo, a breathtaking journey by bus through the Sacred Valley of the Incas. Some of the photos I took from that bus look like they were taken from a plane window. All the while I was listening to Pink Floyd on my Walkman, and the combination of amazing scenery and music was a freakout. The ruins themselves are more evidence of the fantastic stoneworking abilities of the Incas.
Not even the local people there today know how the structures were made so perfectly. By the end of the day my mind was pretty well blown... but the best was yet to come. From Cusco we left by train to spend two days in the Lost City of the Incas, Machu Picchu (Activision - take note of that spelling!). Although I didn't see Pitfall Harry or his Lost Caverns, what was there was simply brainzapping. Perched on a mountain ridge between the peaks of Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu are the remains of a large Inca city. "Remains" isn't really the right word because most of it is still there! The setting is truely awesome with steep drops all around and Inca terracing in the most amazing places. The whole place has the most incredible atmosphere about it. I'm not normally a freak for ruins and suchlike, but sitting in this incredible city watching the sun go down was just too much.	Ollantaytambo - Cusco, Peru.
I got up early next morning to climb the trail up Huayna Picchu, about 1000ft above the ruins. The climb was fairly heavy in places, and occasionally you'd glance over the edge of the narrow trail to look down a 400 foot vertical drop ... but when you finally emerged, up a wooden ladder, onto a circle of large stones right at the summit, it was worth every penny of the airfare just to sit there.
View of Machu Picchu Ruins from Huayna Picchu (aka Wayna Picchu) - Peru.
Once you'd got over the stage of hanging on and swearing, you'd begin to appreciate the view. Looking down, through the clouds below you, the ruins of Machu Picchu lie a thousand feet below ... and all around near-vertical drops right down to the valley floor. I sat there for about an hour, not saying anything, just a total freakout high. That hour was one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had. I didn't ever want to come down, but unfortunately time, tide and Peruvian trains wait for no man, and I had to return to planet Earth.

Back to Reality

That was the climax of the trip, and after Machu Picchu we returned to Cusco and from their to Lima, ready for the journey back home. Returning to Gatwick and sitting on the cold, windy platform waiting for a train to take me through the pouring rain to Reading, it was difficult to believe it had ever happened. It was like being on another planet. In this short summary I can't hope to have described even a tenth of the things I saw and experienced. The whole place, with its Inca and pre-Inca remains and amazing mountain scenery, is far too big to even begin to appreciate in just a two-week package tour. I intend to return, in 1985, with a backpack and hike around, spending at,least a month there. And think of all those llamas!! It was certainly the best holiday I ever had, and two weeks in Peru are worth an eternity on the Costa Brava, believe me. I returned to England laden with llama gear and two litres of Inca Kola (which has since run out), the idea for my next game, a refreshed brain and a burning desire to return.
Jeff on a reed boat - Lake Titicaca - Peru.
View of Machu Picchu from the top of Huayna Picchu - Peru.
The Lost City of the Incas - Machu Picchu (with Alpacas) - Peru.
Sacsayhuaman - Peru.
Article reproduced from Computer & Video Games (C&VG) magazine March 1985 edition. Although all text appears unchanged, some photographs or images have been added or modified for aesthetic purposes. The images above were taken by Jeff Minter and appeared in the original article. If you would like to comment on this article then please use the comment/rating feature available. Thank you to the following websites which were used for sourcing some images that appear in this article: Aracari, McGuinnessonline, Wikipedia.

What do programmers do on their holidays?

We decided to ask the man who launched a thousand camels and

other assorted furry creatures, JEFF MINTER.

Read on for a really cosmic experience.