What makes panama an ideal place for building a canal?

Nicaragua was the site chosen first, and the US began to build a canal there until the stock panic of 1893. Building in Nicaragua would have been less expensive at the time when France offered the semi built Panama Canal to anyone who would buy it. But Cromwell and Bunan-Varilla wanted America to choose Panama, so they got France to lower the price from $100 million down to $40 million. That made it the same cost as Nicaragua. They then used publicity to convince the American public that Panama was the better site, and to illuminate the problems with Nicaragua. In 1902, a legislative bill, selecting Panama as the canal site, passed the Senate and the House of Representatives and was signed by President Teddy Roosevelt.