Not GP, but I moved to Costa Rica for a few months in 2013.

Depending where you go, you can get away with very little to no English.

I was in a (tiny) surfing town, Playa Grande. It gets a lot of foreign surfers, and so all the locals speak English. Many ex-pats live there year-round. Nearby is Tamarindo, very similar there, and a much bigger town.

I can order food and ask for directions and have basic conversations in spanish, if they slow down for me--but I found speaking spanish was always just for fun, and virtually never a necessity.

Hey Thanks for posting - I'm thinking of doing the same in Costa Rica from Dallas,TX for a bit. What would a decent house to rent go for in the area?

Depending on your level of luxury, you can rent for 300-2k per month.

I stayed in this exact place: https://surfproperties.wordpress.com/house-for-rent-in-playa...

The owners live a few steps away in their own home. The wife cleans your place once per week. The man will taxi you around as-needed (he charges normal rates, which are pretty high there--gas is expensive). They are FANTASTIC people, they made my stay much better than it might have been.

There's a wall around the property and a gate that gets locked at night, but in all honesty, I've never felt safer anywhere in my life than I did in Playa Grande--wall or no wall.

Edit: I paid $550/month for that place in the off-season. The prices listed seem a little high, they were going to charge me $600/month in season (US winter is their season, US summer is their winter, and it's pretty rainy).

I suppose you mean you can get away with little to no Spanish, so English is OK?

I did mean that, yes.

I would not be afraid to return if I was forbidden to speak Spanish.