I cannot find my files

[eluser]l2eqless[/eluser]
First off, I'm new to CodeIgniter, so I feel like I am just looking at this the wrong way.

Heres what my view folder looks like:

Views
->includes
->header.php
->footer.php
->template.php (which uses <?php $this->load->view()?> to load the individual files
->images
->css
->index.css

My problem is that within the header I use:

Code:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="<?php echo base_url('css/index.css');?>">

Yet it does not load this stylesheet.

A few things:
-I have the url helper auto-loaded
-in my config.php file, my base_url is set to 'http://localhost/way2project/' and my index_page is the default 'index.php'
-images aren't found when i use a similar base_url() function.

Similarly I cant find the image/css files when I type in:
localhost/way2project/index.php/css/index.css (gives 404 page not found)
or
localhost/way2project/css/index.css (gives object not found)

Any help would be greatly appreciated!