I lived there 10 years ago so I'm sure its even more like the US today, its the most similar country to the USA in that whole area. Yes everything is cheap as hell, you need to know what you're doing though, so make friends with people who know the area. The nature is unreal, Corcovado National Park is where you wanna go for a true jungle experience. You'll wanna learn some spanish but its a simple language and you'll catch on. Allot of people do know English but don't be a kunt gringo yannow? Learn their language especially if you're living there. Yes there are very fine Ticas down there and they pretty much take the cake on having the best looking females out of all of central America. My advice if you go is travel around the country and do lots of outdoor things like whitewater rafting, rock climbing, repelling, zip lines, backpacking, kayaking, etc the list goes on and there's an endless amount of things to do in that country.

The cons are from what I remember: Don't walk by yourself at night in places like San Jose, but kind of a general rule of thumb. Lock your chit up good and don't keep any valuables at your pad when you're not there. You'll wanna try and go with all electronic payments like paypal, venmo, etc and most people take the US dollar down there but you'll want colones and us $ on you at all times too with your passport. Its mainly theft and they are sneaky about it. Not many guns around either, its mostly knife or machete incidents. Never had any issues myself beside gringo being yelled at me occasionally.

Russia to liberate some Russian pussy.

Sign me up. What city/area did you live in/recommend?

thailand you can live pretty luxurious for like $500 a month. but lots of temptations to make you go broke.

Puerto Rico ?