Dreamin' of Unspoiled Island Vacations

By amandak

Everybody dreams of vacationing on a beautiful island--or at least we do. But if we all headed to the same island, things would go downhill pretty fast. So a recent survey done by National Geographic Traveler and their island experts has attempted to rate 111 popular island destinations according to their sustainability and the impact that tourism has already had on them.

They decided that islands with not-so-fantastic beaches and cloudy weather are doing the best at the moment: places like Scotland's Shetland Islands and Denmark's Faroe Islands rate in the top five. Experts were asked to name islands that are "authentic, unspoiled, and likely to remain so." Only the Faroe Islands fit that bill. But in the next category of islands--those that are almost unspoiled but just have minor difficulties--some great destinations pop up: Australia's Kangaroo Island and Tasmania, Dominica, the Grenadines, Molokai in Hawaii, Santa Catalina in California and France's Corsica.

Thing is, we're not quite sure how to use this list for our future vacation planning. Should we avoid the islands which are currently unspoiled and just spend our tourist bucks on the already-spoiled spots? Or should we try the authentic places and just not tell anybody else about it?