Don’t worry, I’m not going to review every airport we go to. Already I’ve saved you from having to hear my thoughts on Heathrow, Cusco International, Puerto Maldonado and the questionably-named Baltra Ecological Airport in the Galapagos, which is where I’m sitting as I write this.

But you don’t get to escape the big hitters. Adopt the brace position as we head for Lima.

Marisal Sucre International Airport, Lima, Perú

I feel like a regular at Lima’s brand new airport. We’ve departed from here twice, once on an internal flight to Cusco and then again on an international flight to Quito when we left Peru. As a result I’m probably the best placed person on earth to review it.

Marisal Sucre International is a brand new airport, barely finished, replacing the old airport which was tiny and surrounded on all sides by the suburbs of Lima. The new place is enormous and as modern as any airport I’ve ever been to.

It’s a very clean stylish building, but it’s been decorated throughout with symbols of Peruvian history and wildlife. In the departure lounges are two huge mascots. In domestic departures, for example, you can meet a giant tree frog, using what I assume is a Peruvian pestle and mortar.

In international departures, meanwhile, you can meet two animals of some kind. I didn’t take a picture of the sign explaining what they are but they look like cute raccoon type things.

Lima is a desert so it’s warm all year round. Thankfully the whole airport is cooled by what appear to be a species of dalek.

Seating is abundant to a degree I’ve never seen in an airport. At our gate everyone waiting to board the plane could sit down with room to spare which felt like a minor miracle. However, the seats are mostly hard plastic. They were comfortable for a while but eventually gave you a numb bum. I give the seating 8/10.

In the gift shop I was able to meet this authentic Peruvian llama, and together we shared the traditional llama face of comradeship.

Overall, this was an impressively efficient and modern airport. If anything let it down it was the general public of Peru who seemed to have never been to an airport before and spent most of their time milling around, blocking corridors, queuing in the wrong place, being shouted at by staff and generally getting in the way. It was for their benefit that all the automated parts of the airport – self check in kiosks, automatic bag drop terminals, gates that scan your boarding pass and so on – had a member of staff standing next to them to operate it for you because nobody could be trusted to get it right.

Overall I liked this airport, and award it an Aviation Quality Rating of 70%.