The Win Report

We live in a crazy world. Someone ought to sell tickets. It seems that people, especially those in the US, are always clamoring for products and services that they don’t need and ignoring those that they do. Financial Management is a prime example. Companies that provide financial management services are often inundated with requests from potential clients that really can’t benefit from their services while many people that should be using a financial manager of some kind are literally flying by the seat of their monetary pants without anyone to navigate for them.

So, how do you know when you need an accountant or financial manager of some kind working for you? Just ask yourself these questions:

• How many bank accounts do you have and what are the balances in each?

• How many investments do you have and what are their values?

If you couldn’t answer these questions without getting out files and statements to look up the answers, you may need to higher a company or individual to meet your financial management needs. If your bank accounts include a checking, savings, and maybe a CD or IRA account and you own ten shares of stock in some XYZ company, you probably don’t need a financial manager at this time.

Most reputable financial management companies will let you know up front whether you can benefit from their services. A few, however, will take on as many clients as they can, regardless of whether that client really needs a financial management team working for her.

Financial management companies can do a wonderful job of helping you turn your money into more of your money. Everyone would like to see a thousand of their favorite dollars become ten or twenty thousand of their favorite dollars. If, however, a thousand of your favorite dollars represents all of your dollars, you don’t need to worry about a financial manager at this time.

Investment Tips by Mika Hamilton - Read more free investment tips, tutorials & reviews at http://www.Global-Investment-Institute.com

South Africa offers tourists coming to our country a huge choice of holiday destinations. But its the Drakensberg Mountains that are still kept as an secret place thats seems a bit off the normal beaten track and while some folks do make it to the Drakensberg most dont.

The best place to start your journey would be to download the free Drakensberg Tourist Map which will give you a great idea of where everything is. This is the only to scale tourist map thats available for the region. It shows all the back roads, indicates which are recommended and which are not and indicates how far things are. But what I like about the map is that its freely distributed, includes all the activities that the region offers and a great selection of the best accommodation that the Drakensberg has to offer.

The Drakensberg starts in the North with Clarens and the Golden Gate National Park and ends in the South at Bushmans Nek. Inbetween you will find the Royal Natal National Park with its Amphitheatre, Mweni the wildest part of the mountains, Cathedral Peak, Monks Cowl, Injasuti, Giants Castle National Park, Kamberg with the best bushman rock art site in the whole Drakensberg Mountains, Loteni, Sani Pass, Cobham, and Garden Castle.

There is lots to do in the region but the main reason you come to the Drakensberg is because of the mountains. While every part of the Drakensberg is special and has its own uniqueness there are a few spots you dont want to miss. The best place to get to the top of the escarpment is at Sentinel peak. The return hike is 5 hours and takes you the top of the Tugela Falls which falls some 948 meters into the Royal Natal National Park below. The view from on top of the Amphitheatre is proberbly one of the most spectacular views in the world. Most tourists tend to walk at the bottom and while its worth the visit ist just not the same as the top.

The Central Drakensberg and Northern Drakensberg form one region and by far the best example of this section of the Drakensberg Mountains is Giants Castle National Park. Essentially the experience in any part of this region is the same where you have the oppertunity to hike the lower reaches of the Drakensberg Mountains or otherwise stay low in one of the valleys. What makes Giants Castle more interesting is the large choice of trails and the lack of other people. I suppe it wont stay that way forever but the experice of walking in the montains and not seeing another sole can still be found here. From Giants Castle looking south the mountains become softer , less dramatic but make no mistake hiking trails in thes gentler landscape is just as good and should be included in your trip. Kamberg is a really good spot where the added attraction of the best site of bushman rock art is available.

Bushman Rock Art is most definatly a reason to visit the Drakernsberg Mountains The excellent video presentation before the 3 hour guided tour at Kamberg gives a great explaination of the history of the people as well as the rock art at game pass shelter. The rock art at Giants Castle at the main caves is also good and is a very easy walk. The Didima Rock Art Centre at Cathedral Peak offers a great presentation although the paintings are reproductions. All rock art must be viewed with a guide.
Horse riding through the foothills of the Drakensberg is an experience not to be missed. Sengani horse trails offers safe trails for beginners and experienced alike. Spionkop game reserve even offers game viewing on horse back.

Steeped in history, the Battlefields Region offers enthralling tales of British, Boer, Zulu and Voortrekker history. The Anglo Boer War reached as far south as Mooi River and the many sites are best visited with a specialist guide

The region offers a fun and fascinating collection of art galleries, craft shops, cheese tastings, leather work, antiques, clothing, gifts and pottery. All the activities represent a unique collection of South African creativity. Take a slow journey to view outstanding galleries such as Millgate, Indigo Fields Gallery, and Zombeza. Community development projects like Eyethu Ceramics and Thandanani Craft uplift local communities allowing tourism a wider benefit.

A trip up Sani Pass into Lesotho and a visit to the highest pub in Africa is a must. It’s a dramatic 4×4 trail climbing 1330m in 6,5km’s Passports required.

Game viewing is available at Weenen, Spionkop, Umgeni Valley and Golden Gate. For Birders the Lammergeyer hide at Giants Castle the Crane Foundation at Kamberg and the bird of prey display at Falcon Ridge are highlights. Fort Durnford in Estcourt offers one of the most complete bird egg collections in South Africa.
For adventure seekers the region offers white water rafting and quad bikes , the longest cable slide in South Africa, a gorge swing and a flying trapeze, bicycle tours and even hot air ballooning

The Drakensberg Boys Choir is a world renowned choir which performs most Wednesdays at 3:30 pm. Bookings 036 / 468 1017. Don’t miss this enriching cultural experience. Another enriching culteral experience is Mpopomeni Zulu tourism experience where tourists have the oppertunity to meet local people, hear a bit of the history of the settlement and taste some of the traditional food. Whats great is that the experience is about real people and does not feel touristy at all.

Or just pamper yourself at one of the region’s many health spas. For a difference Indigo Fields offers a real Africa day spa experience

Drakensberg resourses
———————
www.drakensberg-tourism.com - Hiking trails and accommodation in the Drakensberg. The best tourism promotion website for the Drakensberg and Natal midlands available on the net.

www.drakensberg-tourist-map.com - downloadable map for the Drakensberg and Natal Midlands Regions. The most essential tool for torists visiting this region

www.drakensberg-accommodation.com - A huge list of links to accommodation in the Drakensberg Mountains

www.drakensberg.net - pictoral guide to the Drakensberg

www.antbear.com - Antbear Guest House near Giants Castle in the Central Drakensberg

www.vergzient.co.za - Vergezient Mountain retreat in the Northern Drakensberg

www.palmswift.com - Palmswift B&B accommodation in Winterton

www.sycamore-ave.com - Treehouse accommodation in the Natal Midlands

www.sengani-horse-trails.com - Horse trails in the Drakensberg Foothills

www.dbchoir.info - Drakensberg boys Choir

www.bergfree.co.za - Mountain guide for the Drakensberg region

www.midlandsreservations.co.za - Drakensberg central reservations office

Andrew grew up in the Drakensberg region and runs a little bed and breakfast near Giants Castle in the Central Drakensberg. see this B&B accommodation drakensberg.

Before you can get a website up and running, you need to have a
place to put it. Paying for web hosting is, basically, like
renting a small amount of space on someone’s server and paying
what it costs them to send your web pages to your customers.
Fortunately for you, though, web hosting has never been cheaper.

Domains and Hosting Together?

Many domain name companies have taken to offering you hosting
when you buy your domain from them. This is generally an
expensive option, and a bad idea - you’ll be getting few
features compared to what you’re paying. Few people who are
serious about web hosting get it from the same place they get
their domains.

So Where Should I Start?

Well, that all depends on what your website is going to need.
How many visitors do you expect to have? Are you going to have
lots of large graphics on the site? Do you have a lot of
articles or products that you want to put in a database? Do you
want to have an email address at your website
(yourname@yourdomain.com)? On and on it goes. Each host you look
at will offer you different combinations of features at
different price points, and finding the one that’s right for you
can be quite a task. Here’s a technical-to-English guide to what
you should be looking for.

MB storage. The more MB of storage you have, the more you can
put on your website. For most websites, this number can be
really very small without it being much of a concern - the pages
would be too big for anyone to download and see before they’d be
too big to store. You only really need to worry if you’re
planning to put something apart from plain pages on your site.
If you want to make a gallery for your digital photos or let
people download ebooks from you, for example, this number needs
to be higher. GB bandwidth per month. This is a limit on how
much data your website can transfer each month. For small
websites, you don’t need to worry too much, but as you get more
visitors the amount you need will increase sharply, especially
if each one looks at lots of pages or downloads large files from
the site. The amount of bandwidth your site needs is generally
considered to be the deciding factor in how ‘big’ it is, and how
much it will cost you.

MySQL databases. The number of databases your website will have
to store things in. It will make it much easier for you if you
have one. Don’t pay more to get extra, though: one database is
all you need. It’s worth noting that if your host may offer some
other kind of SQL instead of MySQL (for example, PostgreSQL).
You should usually avoid anything apart from MySQL, unless you
know what you’re doing.

PHP, Perl, ASP, JSP, ColdFusion, Python, Ruby. These are all
scripting languages, used to write your website. You should make
sure your host offers the languages that any software you plan
to use is written in. If you don’t have specific requirements,
then you should be fine with just Perl and PHP.

Subdomains. These allow you to split your website into more
sections than just ‘www’ - you might decide, for example, that
you would people to be able to go to ’shop.yourdomain.com’ and
‘news.yourdomain.com’ and see pages there. You don’t really need
these, though, as doing the same thing with subfolders
(’www.yourdomain.com/shop’) is usually just as effective.

FTP accounts. An FTP (File Transfer Protocol) account is what
you’ll use to upload your website to your host. You’ll always
get one of these. The only situation when you’ll need more is if
you want to let someone alter things on your site without giving
them the master password.

POP3 accounts. POP stands for ‘Post Office Protocol’, which is
just fancy-speak for email. The more POP3 accounts you get, the
more email addresses you can have: useful if you want to have
sales@yourdomain.com for new customers and
support@yourdomain.com for existing ones, for example.