So apparently on cjdns your node keeps track of routes to all other notes that have addresses close to yours -- even if that means they are actually very far away from you on the network (because addresses are just public keys). Then when you want to contact someone you find a route to the closest address of those you know and send your packet there, then the receiver has to find another route and so on -- which sounds terribly inefficient as these packets will travel through the entire globe many times before they reach the destination, and that doesn't make sense, so I am obviously missing something.