My wife and I went to GC when we were newly certified as well and just came back last Saturday. We spent a week there, got to know the island very well and best of all, we really got some good diving experience.
I looked at the resort your staying at on the internet, and as you stated, you're in the upper northeast quadrant. This is one of the less populated areas. I also read a bunch about the diving trips coordinated by your resort.
This is what I can tell you from our experience:
When we first booked our trip, we were going to stay at Cobalt resort, a dive facility. However, about 3 days prior to arriving, my wife and I got mixed signals and hence some apprehension about the dives being scheduled for us. The boat dives (1 - 2 tank dive) were a guided dive to around 100 foot at the north wall and then a buddy dive to around 60. The first dive indicated that we would do a buddy check at 60'. This made both my wife and I a little nervous, no pun intended, but perhaps we were in over our heads. You may want to think about this with the dives you're scheduling at Reef Resort. We had never been below 40' and on the first day, were going to 100'? We started to inquire from other dive facilities, some said, "don't worry about t", but there were the few who said, "no, it wasn't a good idea". I saw on your resort's webpage that their 2tank boat dives include a first dive to 100' on the East Wall with Red Sail sports.
We changed our plans, stayed at a hotel and did 'al la carte' shore diving all week. On the first day, we scheduled a guided shore dive with a Scottish guy with a great sense of humor and he took the edge off immediately. He helped us with much needed weighting assistance. From then on out, the week was fantastic and we both got a bunch of needed experience in the 40-60 range shore diving up and down the west side. Judging from some conversations my wife and I had with other couples, they wished they had done something similar. We weren't tied to any trip timeframes and were able to take our time getting into the water, talking with plenty of other divers and instructors and had time for a stingray city dive (very relaxing and fun). We practiced our own OOA, lost regs, and mask knock-off drills and spent a lot of time, (successfully I might add) locating turtles. A lot of experienced divers we talked to told us we were doing the perfect week for beginners.
I'm not saying that the boat diving isn't great and if the wind had died down by the end of the week, we may have gone to the west wall and done a guided dive, but I would recommend doing a bunch of reading on the boat dives in GC. It's mostly (if not all), wall diving. I guess it depends on how adventurous you are. I should add that we saved a ton of money shore diving. We spent less than $60.00 per day combined. Boat diving is going to run $200 to $300 per day with tips for the two of you. I think if we had done the original trip as scheduled, we would have gotten a bad taste in our mouth and either one of us might have questioned why we were even taking up this sport.
Anyway, from where you're staying, the majority of the shore dives are directly on the other side of the island, probably 45 minutes away. Sunset House, Don Fosters, Eden Rock, Divers Down, Cracked Conch and Lighthouse are just of the some facilities that have a dive shop on site. You could easily spend an entire week diving these locations.
Just my two cents of course. There may be others who feel you shouldn't be concerned, like some of the dive facilities who didn't even think twice about taking two complete novices down to 100+', but we're glad we followed our gut and had a much better and relaxing time.
An important lesson we both learned as a result is to open you mouth wide and speak clearly that you're a beginner. Sometimes it seemed that people didn't hear us the first time and we needed to stress and repeat that fact many times. If you don't speak up, people will assume you are okay with what they are recommending.
If you want our itinerary of the shore dives or the name of the guide instructor, let me know. Have a great time in GC and let us know how it goes. It's a beautiful island. When you take a day off, visit the history museum in Georgetown.
