POVRay 3.5+ does handle UV mapped triangles now using it's mesh2 thing. I haven't really tried it. 3.1 didn't have this though. POVRay requires a bit of work to get what you want being that it's all scripting. It might be easy enough to use a modeller and uv mapper to make your models and then use a converter, or write your own converter, so that using it in POVRay would be simple. Doing it by hand would be insanity.

Things like mazes and fractals and polyheadra shouldnt be that bad though.

Some parts sure. It's still easier to get your head around the problem in a visual editor instead of a text editor.