Santos serves as your gateway to Sao Paulo, Brazil's industrial and economic center. The largest and wealthiest metropolis in all of South America, Sao Paulo sprawls across 589 square miles. The city is currently home to more than 14 million residents, and demographers estimate this number will balloon to 26 million by the year 2000.

Sao Paulo's inexhaustible work ethic and cosmopolitan style is self-evident as you tour this economic and cultural center of Brazil. For native Brazilians and countless immigrants, it manifests the belief that everyone can succeed through hard work and persistence. Sao Paulo is a Brazil very different from the carefree and fun loving city to the north, Rio, and to fully appreciate Brazil's potential as an economic world power, one must see Sao Paulo.

Established as a Jesuit colony in 1554, Sao Paulo's fertile soil and temperature climate attracted countless immigrant farmers, and even today the city supplies half of the nation's coffee, cotton, fruits and vegetables. From this mighty agricultural base, Sao Paulo would become the springboard for Brazil's industrial revolution.

Sao Paulo is to Brazil what Chicago is to the U.S: The country's center of trade and industry. "Sao Paulo works so the rest of Brazil can play," exclaim paulistanos, the city's residents.