language barrier with in the same language?

This Spain experience is my frist time not only being in the country but to another spanish speaking counrty. For being a spanish born speaker being in spain hasn't been at all a trouble communicating. Though, i have noticed some small differences in words that i have used that produce some blank confused faces or have had nice big chuckles from. This last saturday the other 3 guys in the program and I had been walking around in part of the city called Qhueca. Qhueca during the day is a very fashion orientated place with lots and lots of fashions stores that dont come off as being cheap. Though with the obvious signs of expensiveness we wonderd around looking for cheap hats to purchase to protect us from the sun that was going to be in full rage at the bullfight that was later scheduled. After a good 30 mintues of exploring in Qhueca i lost my little patience i had to luckily finding a hat shop to finally asking where one was. I looked around and saw a women wiping down the glass window of the dress store she worked at. I walked up and as polite as possible in spanish said hi and good afternoon and asked where a hat store was. She replyed with "cachucha?" which is the word i used for hat. There was a 10 sec pause between us and I procceded to say cachucha and patted my head. It wasn't till another woman that was inside the store that saw and heard the conversation going that yelled "sombrero" and cleared up the confusion.

It seems that certain words that are in spainsh in certain areas of the world aren't words that are really recognized in other spanish countries. Its kind of nice being able to look silly with a langauge that i thought to be so familiar.