Best Spots for a 'Green' Vacation

Or save on gas. Skip the wine country tour and head to Yield, a San Francisco wine bar that offers "environmentally friendly" wines from California and around the world.

Drive a Car of the Future
Hertz(HTZ Quote) received some of the 10 hydrogen-powered Toyota (TM Quote) Priuses that Quantum Technologies shipped to Iceland as part of that nation's ongoing experimentation with alternative fuels for transportation.

You can rent one of these gasoline-free autos and cruise around Reykjavik as part of a vacation that would be almost entirely fossil-fuel-free. Check out this Reuters video for a sneak preview.

To experience the best of Iceland's love affair with alternative energies, head to the Blue Lagoon, an other-worldly outdoor spa heated with water from geothermal wells.

Experience Sustainable Tourism Done Right
A growing number of developing countries have areas -- such as Peru's Inca Trail, Ecuador's Galapagos region, Vietnam's Halong Bay and Kenya's safari parks -- that rely on tourism for jobs and foreign currency. And they rely on sustainability to keep the tourists coming. Sometimes whole countries, including Dominica in the Caribbean and Bhutan and Laos in Asia, rely on this eco-friendly brand of tourism.

But protecting these places is sometimes easier said than done. Well-intentioned governments have a hard time keeping a cap on the number of visitors they allow when faced with pressure from citizens who want their shot at tourist-related money and jobs. Sometimes the governments don't commit the way they should. Sometimes there are issues, such as illegal fishing off of Ecuador, that are hard to control.

Costa Rica is one place that is recognized over and over again for getting the balance right. The government has implemented its own multilevel Certificate in Sustainable Tourism program that rates hotels, travel agents and other service providers on a scale of 1 to 5 for their commitment to sustainability. The CST's Web site has a database of certified hotels.