I used to think that I had a built-in compass - that you could put me anywhere on earth and I'd be able to find north. Usually this is the case, but I have found that my sense of direction gets tripped up when you drop me into a place where the ocean is on the 'wrong side'. I'm used to having the (nearest) ocean towards the west. If that isn't the case, it takes me a bit of orientation to 'find the ocean'.

But the curious thing is that once I've found the ocean, I seem to be able to keep its location oriented in my brain, and I don't lose it again, no matter how I get twisted around - as long as I stay on the ground and as long as the ocean stays in the same direction.

It was interesting that when living in Colorado years ago that I still maintained my direction by the orientation of the Pacific Ocean, a thousand miles away. Western Mexico, no problem. As a teenager I was at ease finding north in York, England, though this defies my logic completely. Although I do recall flying towards the coastline an hour before landing. But having flown to New York and the Yucatan and most recently to Eastern Australia, my sense of direction was completely destroyed for about 48 hours. The common denominator in these cases is that the location of the sea was apparently on the 'wrong side'. 

Very curious.