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The citizens of the Sao Paulo state , Paulistas, never tire of saying that their state is Brazil's economic powerhouse, and they produce a mountain of statistics to sustain the boast. The state's forty million inhabitants represent about a quarter of Brazil's total population, yet the state contributes forty percent of the federal tax revenues, and consumes sixty percent of the country's industrial energy to produce two-thirds of its industrial output. A highly capitalized agricultural sector produces eighty percent of Brazil's oranges, half of its sugar, forty percent of its chickens and eggs, and a fifth of its coffee. Yet while Paulistas crow that without their muscle Brazil's economy would collapse, other Brazilians feel that Sao Paulo has developed at their expense. The state, it is argued, attracts capital away from the other regions, which are basically seen as sources of cheap labour and as guaranteed markets for Sao Paulo's products.

This economic pre-eminence is a relatively recent phenomenon. In 1507, Sao Vicente was founded on the coast near present-day Santos , the second-oldest Portuguese settlement in Brazil, but for over three hundred years the area comprising today's state of Sao Paulo remained a backwater. The inhabitants were a hardy people, of mixed Portuguese and Indian origin, from whom - in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries - emerged the bandeirantes : frontiersmen who roamed far into the South American interior to secure the borders of the Portuguese Empire against Spanish encroachment, capturing Indian slaves and seeking out precious metals and gems as they went.

Not until the mid-nineteenth century did Sao Paulo become rich. Cotton production received a boost with the arrival of Confederate refugees in the late 1860s, who settled between Americana and Santa Barbara d'Oeste , about 140km from the then small town of Sao Paulo itself. But after disappointing results with cotton, most of these plantation owners switched their attentions to coffee and, by the end of the century, the state had become firmly established as the world's foremost producer of the crop. During the same period, Brazil abolished slavery and the plantation owners recruited European and Japanese immigrants to expand production. Riding the wave of the coffee boom, British and other foreign companies took the opportunity to invest in port facilities, rail lines, power and water supplies, while textile and other new industries emerged, too. Within a few decades, the town of Sao Paulo became one of South America's greatest commercial and cultural centres, sliding from a small town into a vast metropolitan sprawl.

If the thought of staying in the city of Sao Paulo doesn't particularly appeal to you, the state does have other attractions. Though crowded in the summer, the beaches north of Santos, especially on Ilhabela , and around Ubatuba , rival Rio's best, while those to the south - near Iguape and Cananeia - remain relatively unspoiled. Inland , the state is dominated by agribusiness, with seemingly endless fields of cattle pasture, sugar cane, oranges and soya interspersed with anonymous towns where the agricultural produce is processed. To escape scorching summer temperatures - or for the novelty in tropical Brazil of a winter chill - make for Campos do Jordao , Sao Paulo's main mountain resort.

The State

Away from the city, it's the state's coastline that has most to offer. Santos , Brazil's leading port, retains many links with the past, and lots of the beaches stretching north and south from the city are stunning, particularly around Ubatuba . The towns and cities of the state's interior are not so great an attraction - the rolling countryside is largely devoted to vast orange groves and fields of soya and sugar. Good-quality roads run through this region, including major routes to the Mato Grosso and Brasilia.

Travel Details

Buses

Campinas to: Curitiba (5 daily; 6hr); Sao Paulo (hourly; 1hr 15min).

Santos to: Cananeia (2 daily; 4hr 30min); Sao Paulo (every 15min; 1hr).

Sao Paulo to: Americana (14 daily; 2hr); Bauru (7 daily; 4hr 30min); Belo Horizonte (hourly; 12hr); Campinas (hourly; 1hr 15min); Campo Grande (8 daily; 16hr); Cananeia (4 daily; 4hr 30min); Corumba (4 daily; 26hr); Curitiba (hourly; 6hr); Embu (every 30min; 1hr); Florianopolis (8 daily; 12hr); Guaruja (every 30min; 1hr); Holambra (6 daily; 2hr); Iguape (4 daily; 3hr 30min); Recife (4 daily; 40hr); Rio (every 30min; 6hr); Salvador (4 daily; 30hr); Santa Barbara d'Oeste (8 daily; 2hr); Santos (every 15min; 1hr); Sao Sebastiao (6 daily; 3hr); Ubatuba (6 daily; 3hr 30min).

Ubatuba to: Parati (3 daily; 1hr 30min); Rio (2 daily; 5hr); Sao Paulo (6 daily; 3hr 30min).

Trains

Sao Paulo to: Bauru (4 daily; 5hr 30min); Campinas (8 daily; 1hr 50min); Rio Grande da Serra (for Paranapiacaba; every 15min; 45min).

Explore Sao Paulo

Although there's not much to detain you inland from Sao Paulo, Americana and Santa Barbara d'Oeste do have traces of Confederate history, while more recent Dutch immigrant arrivals have left a far greater impact on nearby Holambra . Further into the interior is coffee country, where it's possible to visit some old fazenda houses. To escape the summer heat, the resort of Campos do Jordao , northeast of the city, offers some attractive hill scenery and plenty of walking possibilities.

Rio is a beauty. But Sao Paulo - Sao Paulo is a city.
- Marlene Dietrich

In 1554, the Jesuit priests Jose de Anchieta and Manuel da Nobrega established a mission station on the banks of the Rio Tiete in an attempt to bring Christianity to the Tupi-Guarani Indians. Called Sao Paulo dos Campos de Piratininga, it was 70km inland and 730m up, in the sheer, forest-covered inclines of the Serra do Mar, above the port of Sao Vicente. The gently undulating plateau and the proximity to the Parana and Plata rivers facilitated traffic into the interior and, with Sao Paulo as their base, roaming gangs of bandeirantes set out in search of loot. Around the mission school, a few adobe huts were erected and the settlement soon developed into a trading post and a base from which to secure mineral wealth. In 1681, Sao Paulo - as the town became known - became a seat of regional government and, in 1711, it was made a municipality by the king of Portugal, the cool, healthy climate helping to attract settlers from the coast.

With the expansion of coffee plantations westwards from Rio de Janeiro, along the Paraiba Valley, in the mid-nineteenth century, Sao Paulo's fortunes looked up. The region's rich soil - terra roxa - was ideally suited to coffee cultivation, and from about 1870 plantation owners took up residence in the city, which was undergoing a rapid transformation into a bustling regional centre. British, French and German merchants and hoteliers opened local operations, British-owned rail lines radiated in all directions from Sao Paulo, and foreign water, gas, telephone and electricity companies moved in to service the city. In the 1890s, enterprising "coffee barons" began to place some of their profits into local industry, hedging their bets against a possible fall in the price of coffee, with textile factories being a favourite area for investment.

As the local population could not meet the ever-increasing demands of plantation owners, factories looked to immigrants to meet their labour requirements. As a result, Sao Paulo's population soared, almost tripling to 69,000 by 1890 and, by the end of the next decade, increasing to 239,000. By 1950 it had reached 2.2 million and Sao Paulo had clearly established its dominant role in Brazil's urbanization: today the city's population stands at around ten million, rising to at least sixteen million when the sprawling metropolitan area is included.

As industry, trade and population developed at such a terrific pace, buildings were erected with little time to consider their aesthetics; in any case, they often became cramped as soon as they were built, or had to be demolished to make way for a new avenue. However, some grand public buildings were built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and a few still remain, though none is as splendid as those found in Buenos Aires, a city that developed at much the same time. Even now, conservation is seen as not being profitable, and Sao Paulo is more concerned with rising population, rising production and rising consumption - factors that today are paralleled by rising levels of homelessness, pollution and violence.

Residents of the city, Paulistanos, talk smugly of their work ethic, supposedly superior to that which dominates the rest of Brazil, and speak contemptuously of the idleness of cariocas (in reply, cariocas joke sourly that Paulistanos are simply incapable of enjoying anything, sex in particular). But work and profit aside, Sao Paulo does have its attractions: the city lays claim to have long surpassed Rio as Brazil's cultural centre, and is home to a lively music and arts world. The city's food , too, is often excellent, thanks to immigrants from so many parts of the world.