What if the next glass of water you drink never touched one of our limited underground aquifers?
It sounds like science fiction, but it is happening inside a university right here in Cabo San Lucas. I had the opportunity to visit the facility, where Giancarlo Muñoz and his team turn the humidity in our air into drinking water, mimicking rain and remineralization. I fell in love with the water, which tastes more like well water than anything you’ll find in a garrafón. This water is now bottled locally and sold as WAMO, a clever play on the words “water” and “amo”.
Giancarlo is an engineer and entrepreneur whose work has always revolved around technology. He has lived in Cabo San Lucas for around ten years, but his connection to this place goes much deeper.
From Addiction To A New Purpose In Cabo
Before moving here, he went through a tough period of alcoholism and drug addiction. Then this region changed his pace. During our interview, he shared, “Cabo taught me to slow down, to be present, and to understand that life is much bigger than whatever problem you think is consuming you at that moment.” He added, “The Giancarlo from ten or fifteen years ago probably wouldn’t recognize the person I am today.”
That gratitude shaped his mission: “At some point I understood that my job is not only to build businesses or technology. I also want to leave something useful behind for the people who will come after me.”
The idea began with a conversation. Dr. Ramón Ojeda, who has since passed away, told him, “Giancarlo, you need to find something that can help Cabo.” About six years ago, Giancarlo discovered atmospheric water generation. Think of “what happens when you take a cold bottle outside on a humid day, and droplets of water begin forming on the surface,” he explains. His system does this in a controlled way, much like how rain is made. Humid air is cooled and the condensed water collected, then it passes through around thirteen treatment stages, including carbon filtration, reverse osmosis and ultraviolet treatment, before a final stage remineralizes it. And “we can produce it without extracting that water from Cabo’s limited underground aquifers.”
Building A Business Model To Fund Clean Water
At first he tried selling the machines, but that was a hard ask. So he created PURE, a nonprofit installing the systems, for communities to access free drinking water. Then came another wall: “fundraising is hard.” He asked himself, “How can PURE receive money every single day without depending entirely on donations?” “And the answer was literally in the glass of water I was holding.” Bottle it, sell it, and let WAMO fund PURE. He began his process “in a very artisanal” and grassroots way, testing the water in laboratories, improving the process, “learning and reinvesting.”
The company is still new. WAMO currently produces around 6,000 liters of water per month. Scaling and leaner manufacturing details are still to be figured out. Giancarlo is upfront about this tension: “Cabo has a serious water challenge, and here I am introducing a premium water product.” He wants buyers to understand: “They are supporting a completely different model.” “Cabo has its own reality.” Materials and suppliers are not always available here, and every import can raise the price. “I don’t want WAMO to become something disconnected from the people who actually live here.” Innovation, he says, is “making that technology work within the reality of the community where you are trying to create an impact.”
Teaching The Community About Its Water
PURE is also about learning. “The water problem is not only a technology problem. It is also an information problem,” he says, which is why he teaches students and adults where our water comes from. His vision is for every school and community center to have its own generator, with PURE helping operate and maintain them. “Installing a machine is easy.” The real commitment, he says, is making sure it is “still producing safe drinking water five or ten years later.”
For now, the goal is practical: “sell one hundred percent of the water we are capable of producing.” Then comes expansion, because “humidity is around us. Our limits are basically infrastructure, equipment, energy, and our ability to scale responsibly.” His dream is to build thousands of systems across Baja California Sur in three to five years. His vision is, “The bottle is a vehicle,” where “every bottle helps finance the infrastructure required to give somebody else access to water.”
How To Support Wamo And Pure
WAMO and PURE are both community endeavors that require more than Giancarlo and his team to grow and thrive sustainably. If you live in the southern part of the peninsula, I invite you to support this project. You can buy water directly from Giancarlo, or connect him to key players in the food and beverage industry within your network. If you manage a hotel, restaurant, or business in Los Cabos, ask about WAMO and taste it for yourself. And if you, or someone you know, happens to have “twenty million dollars sitting around” and wants to help solve this a little faster, Giancarlo says he is “very easy to find.” “I’ll take the meeting.” Reach out at +52 624 235 0263 and help turn a bottle of water into a vehicle for change.
