Top five Cuba photos includes a real sleeper

A new Blogger gadget shows a blog's most popular posts. It got me wondering what photos have generated the most hits on Along the Malecon since I created the blog in August 2008.
I quickly learned what photos didn't make it into the top spots. They included:

• Carnival dancers in skimpy outfits.
• Cuban snipers marching with a Soviet rifle.
• The late CIA agent Philip Agee standing on his balcony overlooking Havana.
• A Cuban woman chomping a huge cigar.
• Fidel Castro drinking tea with his pinkie raised, and
• Che Guevara sitting on the potty.

The most popular photo was something completely different. And it wasn't what I expected: A picture of Chuli, a Cuban dachshund with a peculiar tattoo etched near his private parts.

Full-sized, unedited photo of Chuli

I shot the photo with a Sony digital camera in January 2004 while doing a story on the rising popularity of tattoos in Cuba.
Chuli was sleeping on a white plastic chair at a tattoo parlor in Havana. The parlor's head honcho - and possibly owner of the dog - was Junior Perez, my notes show.
I've never been able to make out the dog's tattoo. At one time, I thought it was a pistol. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe it's the face of a dog - and those shapes on either side are the ears. What do you think?

It's not doggie porn, silly. It's a tattoo

The photos of Chuli appeared here on Oct. 1, 2009. The next most popular photo pages - not including subject indexes - were:

 2) Is that a burn scar? 

 3) Butts at the beach

 4) Biker chicks: Sittin' pretty in Havana, and

5) Sexy in red swimsuit.

Source: Google Analytics