Directions, or lack thereof

The spanish word for left is izquerida.
The spanish word for right is derecha.
Now when someone tells you to go straight, the expression is ´sigue al derecho.´
I learned this from my Rosetta Stone during the directions lesson, and find of assumed that ´sigue al derecho´ meant ´follow to the right´, since sigue = follow and I couldn´t think of what else this could mean.
I was told that the word for straight is actually derecho. Now, why would you do this to me, spanish? Why would you make the word for straight and the word for right only one letter apart.  A letter, no less, that usually determines if a word is masculine or feminine.
Now add that to the fact that people talk 4 times as fast as New Yorkers. I have accidentally gone to the right instead of straight and vice versa more times than I would like to admit.

Aside from the language barrier, there are signs. Sometimes you will be looking for something, for example, a nature reserve as I was today. I see no signs anywhere identifying where said reserve may be. So I stumble across a sign with a picture of what I think might be a penguin. Now, no, I don´t think to question why on earth there would be a penguin in Northwest Argentina on a day that´s 70 degrees. But there´s no other sign, so I follow the arrow. And end up at a church. The ´penguin´was actually a nun.  Oops.

I think that´s still better than my experience looking for the zoo in Budapest last summer. I took a bus 45 minutes to where this major zoo was supposed to be. When I get off the bus at the stop the driver told me to, I see nothing. I start walking down this trail that looks like it leads to nowhere, for about 30 minutes.  When I get towards the end of the trail, I see a picture of a bumblebee with an arrow. I don´t know if that means ´this way to the zoo´, or bumbleebees, this way!´ Since I don´t think bees are a popular zoo attraction, and I am not a bumblebee, I was pretty sure I should run the opposite direction. But there was no other way to go, so I pretended I was a bee and went the way the arrow pointed. Eventually I did find the zoo (where there were no bumbleebees to be found), but that sign always amazed me.